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Date:         Wed, 10 Aug 2005 21:18:11 EDT
Reply-To:     THX0001@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         George Goff <THX0001@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: The Zombie Thread: Tongue Weight, Hauling Stuff,
              Bicycle Racks, et al.
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Judging by an e-mail I just received, I guess I ruffled Coupe's feathers a bit with my admonition of his bike hauling scheme. In the way of an explanation of why I was so unrelenting I offer the following.

We all do stupid things.

I once had to cart the hulk of a car and an engine some 75 miles. I had a rolling 240 Volvo sedan and Volvo V-6 to deliver. The engine was a DOHC built by, I'm told, Renault, and it was the heaviest most complicated 6 cylinder car engine I have ever seen. I had a pickup with a step bumper, so I rented a tow dolly for the trip. Two of my friends came along for the hell of it and to help empty the beer cooler. Between beers, we managed to get the car cinched down to the tow dolly and since we didn't want to fuss with dropping the engine into the engine bay, we just chucked it into the spacious trunk of the 240.

All seemed to be fine until we got to the edge of town and I started to accelerate to cruise speed. As soon as I got to fifty, that tail of the dog started to wag the brains out of the dog and, once it started, it did not want to stop doing it. It was all I could do to slow and regain control without becoming the opening story on News at Eleven.

Fortunately, one of my friends had a buddy with a horse farm a few miles from where we were. We used his barn to hoist the engine from the trunk and to dump it into the engine bay. The farmer lent me a cable puller in order to suck the engine down onto the crossmember and with his blessing, "That somabitch ain't goin' nowhere," we were on our way. I can imagine him telling his boys at the roadhouse about how he saved the ass of the dumb city boy who didn't know jackshit about hauling anything heavier than a sack of potatoes.

A favorite quote of mine is: Experience is what prevents us from making mistakes. We get experience by making mistakes.

George


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