Shasta Snow Trip Prep, Phase 1

Our garage, Sierra City
26-Jan-07

This is how things stand. Thankfully, Bart's now standing on his own, on his own feet, as it has been a long week. Or longer. I started a few days after I got home from a long recording session by pulling the transaxle and RGB's from our dormant SO44, since Bart's tranny was barely able to function due to a disintegrating main shaft bearing. I then pulled Bart's engine, set it aside, and yanked the bad tranny. Sounds easy enough, but I ran into nearly every problem in the book, but here we are. I went for a test run yesterday, and everything seems good, and now I'm simply finishing the Pre Shasta Prep maintenance so I can begin the Shasta Snow Trip preparations, as the Trip is coming up soon! I'll do everything I can in the garage, but once I get to the point where I need to put the rack on, it will likely snow, as I haven't the clearance under the garage door top for a bus with a rack! Oh well.

As I work on Bart, down there in my laboratory/shop/junk repository, I find myself continually distracted by various odds and ends I discover while I look for this tool or that part. So instead of getting the tool I need to finish what I was doing, I grab spare parts from here and there and heap them conspicuously for cataloging and packing later. My "be here now" attitude fully sundered, I spy a bit of metal and think "Oh, well that might work for this time when I just might need a whatchermadingit should the flingus fail!" and I grab it and put it somewhere and then remember that several distractions ago I was looking for something important, but oh well, it's three in the morning, and I'm out of coffee and all this rolling around on the greasy rugs and cold concrete has done little to keep my energy up, so off to bed I go.



I work slow, trying to think of everything and do everything I think of, lest the chances of that thing I didn't deal with failing run exponentially higher when I need it to work the most. I think they call that paranoia. But that's Shasta Trip prep for ya. The motto "Be Prepared", like WWI klaxon, keeps me on my toes, but off the edge. To be able to anticipate every potential problem so as to have a remedial plan of action worked out ... now that's exhausting work!

Um...as of 2-Feb-07, the Shasta Trip Preparations are taking all my time and concentration and energy, so I will not be posting any Backroadbus stuff at all until after the Trip. Who knows? Maybe I'll even finish a few of the other pending Backroadbus projects (a couple stories and videos, and of course the Shasta 7 report) sometime during the rest of the winter after the Trip.

Be well, and don't get stuck too bad!



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