Perpetual Ruminations

Tuesday

I better get this done or it's not going on today's date.

It's getting late so I need to hustle up and get this done. There's no particular reason it got so late, just enjoying a day off. Hopefully it's the first of two this week, but the weather may force me to work tomorrow morning. Maybe, but I won't know until morning. Of course, I am hoping that I won't, and my hopes are based on the fact that I haven't been called yet. Usually if he can't make it in, he calls the night before, so I'm thinking he is planning on working, but like I said, I won't know for sure until tomorrow morning.

It's not a bad snow, just a typical March snowfall. No strong winds blowing and drifting the snow around, it's not warm enough to make the snow pack and turn to ice on the roads, and it's not real cold out, either. Just right to get a lot of light, fluffy snow on the ground, and that's just what we have, is a good four or five inches of fluffy snow. The weather report said one to three inches, but it's high enough the door pushes it when I go out, so at least four, more likely five and still snowing. I don't mind, as long as I don't have to drive in tomorrow because the other guard can't.

But, enough about the snow, it's March and we tend to get most of our snow this month. As for my day off, it has been a good one, even though I didn't get much of anything done. I did get the van repaired, or at least rigged up enough to hold things together until it gets nicer out and I can do a better job. Yes, the van we just purchased. I had to go in to work last night to talk to the closing guard and go over a few things with him. After, we picked up a few groceries and then headed for home. Just as we were leaving town, the van sputtered and died. I tried to restart it, but it wouldn't restart.

This has happened before, but it usually only sputters a little then runs fine again. I was planning on taking it in for a diagnostic to see why it's doing this, but now it died completely. Then when it did restart, it only run a couple of minutes and did the same thing. I was able to get off the highway and try and restart it again, and it did restart, but it sputtered and chugged, barely running. I couldn't smell gas, so I didn't think it was flooding, and since it was running, although very poorly, I didn't think it was anything with the ignition. That only leaves the option of not enough gas, and that seemed likely.

Eventually it did restart and run fine, so we set out again, and in a few minutes, it died again. We did get it to restart again, and took the back way home, just in case it did die again we would not be on the main highway. But it seemed to run fine the rest of the way home. Only, I did not know it was going to, so I was trying to keep the RPM's up a bit to prevent it from stalling again. This meant we had the speed up pretty good and of course, a critter just had to run out in front of us.

Now, I said the speed was up there pretty good, but not excessive, mind you. We were not speeding, and in fact were just under the speed limit. I kept the RPM's up, while keeping the speed about sixty miles per hour. We were cruising right along and here comes this raccoon out on the road, crosses and just as he gets to the opposite shoulder of the road, he turns at the last minute and runs right back in front of us. There was no time to do anything, just drive over him.

So, I did. I don't like to run over any animals, not even the gophers that sit out on the road and play chicken. But sometimes there just isn't anything a person can do. This was one of them times, and it would not have made any difference if the van had been running good or not, the raccoon played chicken and lost simply because there was no time to stop and no place to go. He ran right out in front of us and hit the bumper, then went under the driver's side front tire, then the driver's side back tire. At least I know he did not suffer, the impact would have killed him instantly, and if by some chance it had not, the tires going over him would have finished the task. Of course, with the van not running right, I couldn't slow down or stop to do anything.

So we continued on, only we could hear something rubbing. It wasn't bad, but it was something against the tire. No, it wasn't Rodney Raccoon, although I at first thought this same thing. But, I felt both tires go over the carcass, so I knew it could not be. That meant it had to be part of the vehicle, although I didn't have any idea what part it might be. We made it home with no further problems with the vehicle or the animals, and once I was parked in the driveway, I looked to see what was rubbing. The cowling under the bumper had busted loose and was pushed back into the tire by the wind created by driving. At slow speeds and sitting still, it just hung down, but when the vehicle was in motion at moderate to higher speeds the wind would pull the cowling back enough to rub against the tire.

It had rubbed a small hole into the the inside fender of the cowling, but not bad. It looked terrible but it was all superficial damage. Even so, I imagine that cowling would cost a couple hundred dollars and then ti would need painting which would bring it up even higher. Instead, the options were to rip it the rest of the way off, which wouldn't cause any problems, but would like like hell, or to find a way to reattach it. I did figure out a way to put some stiff, heavy plastic behind the broken area of the cowling and then use screws to secure it in place. This in turn also secured the cowling and it doesn't look very bad. It will need to be redone when the weather is nicer, and I may even be able to use a cement or epoxy to secure things, so the screws will not be there. If not, they can be painted to match the cowling's color and look pretty good.

Now, I just need to install some kind of cow catcher on the front to protect it from anything else.