(written on October 2nd and 7th from notes taken previously)
When it rains, it pours. 😕
Last night was hell.
I got back to Haven Hill, and there was something that I was doing in the lower field. I don’t remember. I think maybe it was dropping something off down there, but as I was leaving, I guess I took the turn a little too early to go up the hill on the grass, and ended up in the muddy part where grass hasn’t yet grown back because it’s mostly red clay.
I ended rolling to a stop as I was going uphill with my rear wheels spinning in mud.
No big deal, I’ll just back up and go around, right?
Wrong.
😒
Even though I was on an uphill angle, and normally, the weight of the vehicle would just roll me back down, the dirt that I was in was so saturated, that I couldn’t roll back. Attempting to roll back, or giving any gas at all just dug myself in deeper.
Deeper and deeper I dug. I tried to get myself out in every way I could imagine. I tried different angles. I tried digging out.
Eventually, I got my truck and tried to pull my van out.
No dice. My truck’s four wheel drive doesn’t work, and though the bed is full of stuff, the rear tires just spun.
So I got my skid steer going, managed to get it out without getting completely stuck in the mud, and I hooked up my skid steer to my truck and my truck to my van, put my truck in gear, put my van in gear, and then pulled with my skid steer.
No dice.
I was high centered in the mud.
So I would dig out. And then I could pull forward the handful of inches, but then I would just High Center again.
I spent hours digging out and then pulling and digging out and then pulling only to realize in the end, that it wasn’t going to be successful.
Not only that, but with the awful oil leak in my truck, at one point, I got back to my truck and heard my engine making an awful noise.
I’d run it so low on oil that one of the lifters was making an awful racket.
One of the lifters has always had an intermittent tick, but it’s never been that bad.
I put some oil in it, and the noise went away, but now I get to tell all the people interested in buying it that there’s potentially engine damage.
Great.
I was so angry. 😞
After hours of effort trying to dig out and finish pulling it uphill, I gave up and decided my best shot was going to be to do the same thing but downhill.
The problem was that there was even more mud going back downhill, and I’d already use the skid steer to excavate behind the van, so now there was a veritable ditch behind the van that I would have to figure out a way to get through or skirt somehow.
I broke a chain.
I busted one of the tow hooks on my truck.
I bent my rear bumper on my van when one of the chains came flying off and caught it, I think.
I potentially ruined my engine in my truck, and certainly massively reduced the amount of money I can ask for it in my attempts to sell it, even If no real damage is there, I can’t prove it, so it’s a massive risk for somebody, which means I’m going to get pittance for this truck.
So much time and energy and effort and money wasted on this truck.
[sigh]
After I think somewhere around four and a half or 5 hours of effort trying to get my van unstuck, and after all of those things happening, I finally got the van out of the mud.
I took the truck on a test drive to see if I had ruined the frame jerking so hard.
Then I took the van on a test drive as well to see if I had bent its front end.
Neither drove noticeably differently. Hopefully, that means no structural damage.
Rough night. Rough day. I’m just about as bad as ever.
I’ve pretty much completely reverted.
More relapse. Junk food diet. All my online, media, and sports addictions all back in an absolute flash.
Livid with God.
It’s all back as though I’d never left Arkansas and nothing had changed.
I want to blame it on coming back to Arkansas, neural pathways kicking in while back in a place where I was and felt and did certain things in certain ways, and there’s likely some truth to that, but I still have my ability to choose, and I just fell completely apart.
😞
I spent a good chunk of the day cleaning up down by the shed. I gathered up metal and took it to the metal recycler, making a grand total of $38, but at least cleaning out my truck bed, the old van parts, and the other metal that I’ve been collecting for a while.
Jim invited me up for pizza at his place, and I took him up on the offer, hanging out and talking for a while.
Went to the neighborhood market, and then crashed for the night.
I’m pretty broken at this point.
Lift the World 