!!!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

BRK #243

What. A. Sunrise.



And what a day to go along with it. First time ever driving a truck this size.



...Down a mountainside. With a beaver-tail trailer attached.

Then back up a few hills, then to Basecamp.



...With an excavator in tow.

I feel like I had a couple Near-Life Experiences today.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day.

(PS: if anyone wants a higher-resolution version of that sunrise, just drop me a line.)

Wow. Congrats, getting the trailer out of there was definitely a feat, I'm guessing you were too busy to document the process at the time. Curious how you managed this frost-defying feat even if it didn't allow surplus time to visually document...

With a beaver-tail trailer attached.

FYI: that trailer is not a beaver-tail.  It is a tilt trailer.

BRK #244

Helped Caleb extract a stuck Toots today. Looks like it's not so much Spring as it is Mud Season.



But with it, comes a special guest at the Boot Camp. Thanks for being here, JR!

We put him to work right away (of course) on our special digging project over at Basecamp, near the Love Shack. More details when this comes through. By the looks of things, I'd say JR is making excellent progress.



I had a little more... idle time today in the Millenium Falcon (our dump truck). So I caught a couple more snapshots of some of the equipment in the driver's seat. This stuff is wild.





Now, if the vehicle would only drive for longer than, say, 200 feet before stalling out on me, that would be nice. Seriously, just when I start falling in love with a stick shift again...

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

Coydon Wallham wrote:Wow. Congrats, getting the trailer out of there was definitely a feat, I'm guessing you were too busy to document the process at the time.

Yeah, my hands were kind of full with a titanic steering wheel.

To sum up the process: Took a practice drive down and then up the mountain (Caleb's excellent suggestion, I must admit), latched the trailer to the truck back at the top, then slowly made my way down. Caleb brought down the excavator and then drove it onto the flip-flop end of the trailer. Paul came down, assisted me in chaining the excavator to the trailer, provided some general coaching, then followed me back to Basecamp. Somehow, I drove it into the driveway.

Didn't stall it once. But I must admit there was only passing similarity to this experience and that of driving my manual Toyota Corollas back in the day.

Today's a different story. The Falcon won't stay running. So we're ringing the mechanics again. But the big job is started at least, now that the excavator is where it needs to be.