My registration sticker was expiring on November 30th. I applied for my new registration sticker.
The DMV described the fee schedule as follows:
$1.00 – DMV transaction costs, such as credit card processing, record services, cost of new sticker
$98.00 – Fee to cover welfare benefits for 13-year old mothers in New York City
Total Cost: $99.00
Rainy days are good for sitting around and doing back of the envelope math calculations…
Height of Roof of My Truck per GM = 73.6 inches or 6 foot, 2 inches
Height of Cap on Truck 73.6 + 5.5 per ARE for MX cap = 79.1 inches or 6 foot, 7 inch
With Zone Lift Kit (adds 6.5 inches) plus 35 inch tires vs stock 31s (adds 2″ per tire as they measure the radius of tires) together adds 8.5 inches = 87.6 or 7 foot, 8 inch. My tires are wearing out, at some point I got to bite the bullet and get the lift kit.
The current hood height on my truck is 4 feet. The CB antenna is 4 feet. The mount is roughly 6 inches. The current height of the antenna is 8 feet 6 inches, which hits all the McDonalds 9 foot low clearance signs. After I get my lift kit, the CB antenna clearance 110.5 inches or 9 feet and 1.5 inches.
The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation says I should be good for clearance on most DEC truck trails up to 9-10 feet, and the antenna is on a spring when I hit low branches.
Getting Big Red back tomorrow around 11 AM …. There is some repair to the interior that still has to be done, but I was told I could drop it off to have the repairs finished one afternoon next week. Going to stay in town this weekend, just to make sure things are running fine, but next week I will head up to Moose River Plains for the long weekend.
God Really Doesn’t Want Me To Get My Truck Back. The shop drove my truck to get the bedliner re-sprayed, and found the fuel gauge wasn’t reading, so now they have to install a new fuel sending unit tomorrow afternoon. At least that’s a relatively minor repair. Other than that it’s running good, or so they say. But they are still hopeful for getting my truck back tomorrow, abit later in the evening.
Big Red is painted and reassembled. Tomorrow morning the bedliner gets re-sprayed, once the bedliner dries the cap will be reinstalled and re-wired on Friday. I expect to have Big Red back midday on Friday.
20 years ago, it was a common sound effect on television shows when a scene came to abrupt stop, to have the background music stop with the effect of a needle dragging along the grooves, as one carelessly took the stylus off the record. When you wanted to start listening to the record again, you would try to find your place, and drop the needle on it. It would make a loud clunk and the music would start playing again.
Much like a record suddenly paused in the middle of a song, one sometimes has a moment in their lives that turns everything up on the table. Where everything was going to plan, until suddenly something goes terrible wrong, and you spend months rebuilding and trying to figure out where you where on the record before you lifted the needle off the record.
It’s often not easy to go back where you left off. Times change, experiences change your perspective on everything. Part of your innocence is forever lost. You struggle to find your new identity and to make up for lost time. The world has evolved and things have changed, ever since the needle left the record in that sudden fashion. Much like the record that continues to spin around, time marches along while you recover.
What happened, happened. You have to tell yourself that, and hold your head, and move forward. You can’t get back what you lost, most of important the time. But you can move forward, seeking new direction and new experience. You have satisfied with the best you can do moving forward.
Sometimes life comes to an abrupt stop, but you just got to pick up the pieces and move on.