On Saturday I continued the big sonny-do project of my visit to my parents house: replacing rotten footers under the kitchen. To access them, one of my tasks was to break up some nearby concrete. After working the jack hammer for ten minutes, I remembered why I became a writer; I’m too old to be doing heavy construction. Another two hours passed before all the cement was removed. By then half my body weight had melted out through sweat; I was soaked. But, at least I was done with that step of project. Yeah!

So, how did I celebrate? By abandoning the project for the day and driving down to Tacoma to hang out at the FC Get Together.

The 2pm timing of my arrival couldn’t have worked about better, because there was still some lunch available and I was hungry after digging up half of Renton. I chowed down while enjoying the company of old friends and meeting a few new ones. After lunch, we spent a couple hours basking in perfect weather, staring at the FCs, sharing stories, and discussing the finer aspects of how the Americans consume water from western Canada, yet Canada gets the better view of Niagara Falls. We concluded we have no control over any of it, so we should just play with our jeeps.

One of the more interesting FCs was the FC-150 Blaine dragged to the event late Friday night. He purchased it up north. I think the only thing holding it together is the green moss.

The grand event of the afternoon involved moving of a heavy duty International rear axle from Blaine’s truck to Steve’s truck. Since all of us are handsome and strong bucks, you’d think we’d each grab a part of the axle and move it with manpower.  But, no, we couldn’t possible do that when we had a tool for the job: Jim’s Holmes 440 wrecker setup on his FC. So, with Jim, Blaine and Steve doing all the work and an international community of supervisors, including me, Canadian Dave, and other, providing all manner of advice, they set out to make the transfer. Here are a couple photos:

The wrecking arm getting positioned inside the back of the truck. The wrecker runs off the PTO of the T-98.

Even father inside . . .

Success!

They had to set down the axle and hand crank the big arm upward until it was high enough to drop the axle into Steve’s truck.

 Thanks again to the Mingo’s for putting on the event!