It's a blustery 25 degrees out this evening with 15 mph winds whipping snow across Nellybelle's windshield here in the high mountain meadows parking spot I'm calling mine right now. The glow from nearby streetlights helps animate passing wisps of snow as they swirl across the hood. It's very Disney-like and at least 32.4% of me is able to imagine I'm living in a van-shaped snow globe, just like Tinkerbelle did on my childhood nightstand.
I'm close enough to "the tracks" right now to note the serendipitous passing of a freight train. I'll briefly bask in the subtle sub harmonic "mellow"dy as I reminisce on memories of youthful nights in east Omaha growing up by the Union Pacific rail yard. With the red-shifted wail of the horn on the leading diesel now well north of town, I shall shift focus to slightly less-current events.
Like how it's been a couple days now with no recurrence of any of the problems with Nellybelle, the last of which was the belt alignment issue that sprang to life with a vengeance just at the point I thought I had fully dealt with all the more difficult mechanical replacements. There was something like a week of added grief thanks to the belt issue. It took replacing the air conditioner compressor with a false pulley and then figuring out a workable alignment. At any and every point in the repair and replacement project over the 15-17(?) days of Nellybelle's fiasco, where trial and error could trip one up, it did. It took a great combination of friends and mechanics to accomplish the project and I am grateful to them all. There's officially a new water pump, timing chain, oil pump and oil sending unit. And the A/C-pulley-belt replacement thing. Time to start working on Nellybelle's knees! She's still got a few more mountains to help me climb.
Enjoy.
