This Old Truck

What do you do when it’s way below Zero Degree Fahrenheit ever thing is covered in snow, your boat is in warm Central America and we are still in Kansas. Well here is what you don’t do. No tromping around in blowing snow and snow drifts this cold hunting rabbits. No riding our old antique motorcycle even if I want too. It won’t start when it’s this cold anyway and Pam can’t get on enough clothes to ride and not be blowing off the back. What can we do here we can’t do in Guatemala? Eat American food, steak, snow crab legs and chicken livers by the pound. Watching TV is still out. It’s has been over 10 years without TV and we still don’t miss it. We have borrowed our son’s old truck to get around. A 1972 old Chevy bought new by the telephone company here. Now it’s just fun to drive it around. Remember we are old and can remember when a new 1972 Chevy was way out of our price range. It’s not in bad shape being this old but as things go some time it was in need of some repair. The wind is just bad out here and before we got here our son was driving it and the wind jerked the door open too far and tore out a hinge. Finding a good door is hard. He found one really rusty. I said take it off cut them into, weld them up and make one good door. We left the truck just out of his yard at his house and peasant hunters shot it out there hunting and got the windshield and both headlights. They must have been a good ways off for the shot to spreed that far apart or more than one shooting. I went to get it and hit a clump of snow and knocked the muffler off. Remember it’s cold out here so we went to a farmer’s shop that is heated and went to work. I found some old tail pipe and made a plate welded on the front of the muffler. Now it was running quite again. New headlights and a wheel cylinder for the brakes. The door could wait and the windshield just has a crack. We left the shop after dark and fog set in. Headlights not set right, turned in to a store parking lot set them again and now we could see a little better but only a little. Temperature getting below freezing and freezing fog is terrible. Made it to our son’s house but he lives on a dirt road. Now driving in mud, visibility bad, hoping the door just held on with a rubber strap wouldn’t fall off. Made it to his house and headed to our little house out on the prairie. As I parked (this old truck has a stick shift in the floor) the stick in the transmission broke but we were home. We are still driving it getting in on the riders side. It looks good and when people ask me if it’s mine I say I’m just processing it. Some people think processing something is ownership. Maybe it is. Either way it’s fun to drive and has a good “heater”. Be back in the Caribbean soon and dealing with the heat. If we ever find a place that is perfect sorry “We won’t tell anybody.”

“1972 Chevy”

Snow in Kansas

Last week life out here was old trucks and guns. This week it’s snow. We are still in Kansas. Weather out here is the wind. What ever happens out here you watch the wind. Pam and I were born in the deep south where snow mint a holiday or every one treated it that way. Even today back there a light snow will empty the shelf in grocery stores and close schools. Out here life just goes on the best they can but as I said. It’s the wind that makes the weather out here. With the only trees out here being the one people have planted around their houses and most of the land being open even a little snow can blow. We got 5 inches yesterday and the wind was light so not too much in snow drifts but the last snow with high winds our son went to help a farmer feed cows driving a truck being pulled with a tractors. We weren’t here but he said the roads just disappeared. The land out here is not completely flat with little rises and falls not really hills. Our son said if you went over a rise as you went down the other side the snow was over the hood of the feed truck. Only way to get to the cows with the feed truck was with that tractor. Maybe that’s why we like it out here. There is adventure in just living out here. Remember with Pam and I living on boats for a large part of our life now, the weather has always been a big part of our lives. The last 35 years of our lives it’s been hurricanes and not snow. The big thing with hurricanes is not being prepared. Years go by without a hurricane and people get unprepared. We have been in 4 hurricanes less than a month apart and the first was bad and the next one not so bad. It’s like that with snow, when in the deep south it’s rare and out here it’s just a way of life. There is no snow men we have seen or any home made snow ice cream. To all our friends out there that love adventure remember were worm and there is adventure even in a hurricane or maybe a snow storm. Here is the recipe for snow ice cream.

Big bowl of snow. Mix enough Eagle Brand Sweeten condensed milk to snow to look like real ice cream. You can add a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring if you want to but not necessary.   “Enjoy”

There is a street out there some where.

Pam peeping out.

Our Back Yard

 

Old Guns And Old Trucks

Happy New year. We are writing this still in Kansas. It’s 11 degrees outside and we are setting by the fire. Our boat is hopefully Okay still in the Rio Dulce river in Guatemala where it’s never cold. To the people there 70 F is very cold and they will be all wrapped up in big coats if it’s gets near 70. Here bad weather is normal but the worst in weather here is the wind. It’s blowing now and with it being 11 degrees outside the chill factor is way below zero. Trees are not normal here out on the prairie so people plant tress around their houses to block the wind. Farmers build metal walls for their cows to get behind. I guess by now you are wondering why we are out here. When I tell people about the Caribbean, I tell them there the “ food is bad, the music is worse and it’s hot”. All I have said is true so why would people go to the Caribbean on a boat or Kansas on a motor bike. We road out here last summer on a old bike we love from New Orleans and that too I can’t explain how much we loved that. I ask myself with the “where we live thing” that the first time I drove a big truck into New York city. Why would anyone pay what they have to pay to live there. Remember if you read our blog I’m getting old, only finished the 8th grade in school so with being old and not very smart I have no answer for why we do what we do. With Pam and I, we like the change and what a change it is getting off a plane here or there. Maybe it’s the little things that make us go do and live where we do. Out here it’s the open land every where. The farmers and their way of life. The wildlife. The food. Even the music (old country). Lots of old farm trucks and guns. Our son owns a 1949 Dodge farm truck and I now own a 1909 side by side double barrel 12 gauge Aubrey shot gun. For all of you out there that don’t like people hunting with guns remember we fish a lot on our boat and have fishing rods. Killing a fish to eat with a hook is okay to most. Killing a rabbit with a gun should stop you from being on a jury a woman told me one time. Maybe the reason people don’t see fishing the same way they see hunting is the noises. Hunting fish with a big gun seem to prove that. Ether way I want do either today. Too cold but I will go with our son to help feed the cows, see how many eggs I can get in the chicken house, check on the pet goat, make sure the heaters are working in the water troughs and they have water to drink. Again I don’t know why but we like farm living but live on a boat. When we have enough being some where and head home, Its always our boat. So where ever you are and what ever you are doing as I have said “We hope you all a Happy New Year.”

Tim’s new shot gun.

1949 Dodge

Open farm land. You can see for miles.

Leaving New Haven anchorage in Belize at sunrise. You can see for miles