{"id":464,"date":"2014-03-04T16:13:41","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T20:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/?p=464"},"modified":"2022-07-11T10:31:03","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T14:31:03","slug":"spring-cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/?p=464","title":{"rendered":"Spring Cleaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow…what a mess. Five blog sites, two platforms, a mix of themes and topics.  I think I’ll stick to this site for anything but experimental work. I never got to blog about it but I ended up selling my firetruck sometime late in 2010. I guess it’s like when you think its a good idea to adopt that stray mountain lion kitten and realize, after awhile, it’s not really practical. That’s what my wife felt like. Except she never thought it was a good idea. Plus I kept forgetting to turn off the fuel pump and flooded the engine with fuel three times. (yes, this vehicle has a fuel pump that turns on separately from the ignition).<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
1959 American Lafrance Series 900 Pumper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The guy that bought it, a handyman who lives in the country, thought it was would be a good idea to have an antique firetruck — see, he has twin 3-year old boys and figured they’d have all kinds of fun with it. I made sure he had informed his spouse before committing to it.  I had to get a flatbed truck to pick it and deliver it the 50 km distance in the country. He arrived late on a rainy Saturday near dinner time. I followed him for the journey, feeling quite sad to see her go. She looked graceful but awkward riding on the back of the flatbed — perhaps even somewhat embarassed.<\/p>\n

At the end of the country road, in the pouring rain, I met with the new owner and we let the pumper slide onto the road where a tractor was waiting to pull it up the driveway to his home. As we rounded the corner and arrived at the front porch of the wood-framed home,  a woman stood with two smalls boys clutching her skirt.  Their father beamed “Look guys! It’s a firetruck!” He asked if I could sound the siren. I press my foot down on the pedal and pumped and the siren let out a wail. The children blocked their ears and began to cry.  Good luck, I thought, to all.<\/p>\n

He gave me cash and brought me back to the trucker so I could pay for the tow job then bade me goodnight. I climbed up to the passenger window of the immense Freightliner and paid the driver. I thanked him for his services and stepped back onto the lower step of the truck.  Then realized there is no lower step.<\/p>\n

I landed hard on my back with my head hitting the hard, cold muddy ground. I struggled to stay conscious as I realized that a good part of my body was beneath the cab and the driver, not knowing that I fell, was revving the engine and getting ready to put his vehicle into gear.<\/p>\n

I scrambled and cleared the underside with barely a few seconds to spare. I sat in the mud for a few moments, contemplating how close I had come to losing the use of my lower body (at best) — it put my sadness over losing the firetruck into perspective. Yet another left turn, averted that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow…what a mess. Five blog sites, two platforms, a mix of themes and topics.  I think I’ll stick to this<\/p>\n

Continue readingSpring Cleaning<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-firefighting","category-home-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/instipator.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}