tires - Ovation

Aalaskan Stories: Humor At 65 Aalaskan Stories: Humor At 65 Below

From: Prince
Description:

     Here are excerpts from an article I wrote in the winter of 1968. I have lived in Alaska since then, and this was my first and coldest winter in Fairbanks.   The cars, and the weather, have mostly improved since then. Don Murphy



                       Humor at Sixty Five Below



     Starting a car at -50 is similar to the situation in which a man is freezing to death and has one match. He may be able to parlay his small flicker into a fire which will keep him alive, but he has only one chance. The odds are a little better for starting a car but if the motor doesn't catch on the first two or three tries at -50 or lower, you're dead, because your battery is. There are gadgets to get around this, which like most gadgets in extreme situations are of dubious efficiency. Such as battery plates, and blankets. and the latest expensive high tech gadget, a device which automatically starts a car at adjustible time intervals and runs it for several minutes then turns it off.


     When the temperature gets down to -60 he will find that the only thing which will make a car dependable is a heated garage. If the chechako buys all the 110 volt heaters recommended by locals, he will not only only blow fuses, but will not be able to pay his electric bill. However, a soldier I met from Ft. Wainwright ran 5000 watts of heaters all night, every night. He boasted his car was warm as toast every morning, at -50. (The army paid the electric bill.)

      Hilariously funny things happen to ordinary, everyday objects at -50 and colder. I found that if I dribbled my 10 weight winter oil on the snow I could pick it up in a few minutes like a large worm, and stretch it like taffy. A long dribble of it can be wound into a coil like rope. Plastic electrician tape becomes as black glass. A foot long piece of tape was left in the motel parking lot at about -45 and a car ran over it. The tape exploded into splinters, but didn't puncture the tire. I sent some of the splinters to a friend in Illinois as a souvenir of the frozen north.

         Before this winter was over many records were broken for cold in Fairbanks. The most significant was the coldest 15 days ever recorded by the US Weather Bureau, -44 degrees below zero average for 15 days. The thermometer on the motel front porch dropped to -68, and that could only be guessed at because the lowest mark on the thermometer was -66.   It was one of those big filling station thermometers with a red liquid column about a yard long. But it wasn't a yard long then. The liquid was hiding down in the bulb. Of course by that time we didn't care.

    More hilarious things happened to my Scout. At -60 butyl (artificial) rubber tire tubes get brittle and begin to come apart. The first symptom is a slow leak at low temperatures, and soon the tubes won't hold air at all. A butyl tube was responsible for a flat in one of my six ply, nylon tires at -65.   So the tire had to be changed, outdoors.

            The first mistake I made was kneeling on the hard packed snow while I put the jack under the Scout. In spite of heavy wool pants and thermal underwear my knees were numb in two minutes. So there I was at -65 in a motel parking lot pounding and pinching my knees. A couple of old blankets helped, even better would have been kneeling pads.

            A friend of mine and I finally removed the wheel from the car, and something else hilarious happened. We found we could use the flat tire for a monument.   We sat the tire in the middle of the parking lot, vertically.   The flat side of the tire stayed flat and formed a pedestal. We took the wheel, tire and all, into my apartment and put it into the bathtub, where it took two hours to regain its original shape.

             The spare was also in a hilarious condition.   The air gauge registered zero.   But the tire was frozen round. So we put the spare on the Scout, and drove four blocks to a filling station. The tire kept its frozen round shape with no air pressure. We put 40 pounds of air into the tire. It didn't look any different.

             This six ply nylon tire had held up the weight of a thousand pound vehicle for four blocks, without even bulging the sidewalls. It was frozen so solid that I could flick it with my finger and it would go "clink" like glass.

              Many other things happened to my vehicle that winter which weren't so hilarious. I was driving down a steep hill and felt my foot go slowly to the floorboard.   I managed to stop the Scout and found a puddle of brake fluid on the ground. A steel brake line near the left front wheel had split, brittle from the cold.

              The brake lines to the front wheels broke six times and had to be repaired, outside. I used heat lamps to keep my hands from freezing when I had to take my gloves off to work. Ordinary light bulbs go dead. The glass cracks from the contrast of the heat inside and cold outside. The heat lamp scorched a hole in my sleeve, but I didn't even feel it.   I learned to bring all my tools and parts out from a warm room just before I started to work, and found a brake line at room temperature won't screw into a fitting at -50. The temperature makes them different sizes.

              A wrench at room temperature dropped into the -60 snow for just long enough for me to grab it back. It burned my bare hand like fire and left a white streak across my palm.. The wrench achieved below zero cold in a few seconds.   I managed to keep my hands from frostbite, but they became sore several times.

            On the -65 day the Scout moved!   Its top speed was about 10 mph. All the power was being taken up by friction. But most of the cars and trucks of Fairbanks, which had not been stored in heated garages, didn't move at all that day.

      Then we had a Chinook. A Chinook is a hot wind. I was wrapped up in my arctic gear, opened the outside door and didn't get the usual steam cloud. I felt a warm wind on my face. And the temperature rose! It rose 30 degrees in 30 minutes, from 40 below to 10 below.

      This was so hilarious we ran around with our parkas open.

      Until the temperature dropped again.
Blog post
9 months ago
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From: DAMP
Description:
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There's More 34 There's More 34

From: RKReese
Description:

OK, This one does not look all that different from the one before, but it is! I have another 15 hours in it doing a bunch of details. The grill, tires and louvers on the side of the hood. I love the details, but seem to be getting to old to be able to see them. This is why I use the computer, I can blow the lil' buggers up 1500 times. Put them in one pixel at a time............
1 year ago
Views: 108
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Rims Rims

From: DAMP
Description:

reflection of my car in another black car next to mine
2 years ago
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From: RKReese
Description:

I must really like tires, cause this took long enough
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From: fredgasbury
Description:

Another of the Wheels and Tires series. This image was inspired by the great animation shots in Star Wars.
2 years ago
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stonewal stonewal

From: miwolf58
Description:

Today is the 42^nd anniversary of the infamous Stonewall Riots and generally looked upon as the beginning of the modern Gay Liberation movement…don’t worry, this isn’t a history lesson…stonewall is well documented, if you’re interested you can Google it…although there is no official recognition, the glbt community looks at the entire month of june as our month of Pride…cities across america, indeed the world, stage elaborate celebrations and parades in declaration of our very existence…this year the state of new york, their legislature and governor, saw fit to legitimize our relationships by granting the right to marry and divorce…the news gave an extra boost of exuberance to the celebrations in new york, and really to every gay and lesbian in this great land…meanwhile, in chicago a group of , I’m guessing, homophobic thugs saw fit to slash the tires of forty floats scheduled to be a part of that city’s parade…hate never ends…ask any black person you know…my initial response to the news from new york was an overwhelming desire to be there…to join in the festivities…I’ve been there for new york’s pride events in the past…the first experience of it was unexpectedly emotional…I’d always been ok with myself as a gay man…I was raised to have self respect…and coming of age in the seventies couldn’t have been better timed…to be sure, I did lose friends because of it…disapproving, judgmental, ‘christian’ people turned their backs on me, even chastised me…my reaction was to cut them out of my life, and keep plugging along…but the first new york pride parade I’d been to was a real eye opener…there were a million and a half people just like me…young, old, queens, leather dudes and dudettes, butches, fems, cops, doctors, florists, body builders, cowboys…the list goes on…I admit the pride at being part of something larger, something that big, brought tears to my eyes…I wanted to be a part of this momentous time in our history…I even jumped to the notion that my partner and I should move to nyc, something I had done in my youth and swore I’d not do again…the reality is that I’d had no desire to attend this year until I got the news, and in fact had already made plans with friends for our monthly trivia challenge at our local vfw post…my scheduled appointment obviously paled in comparison to what was going on elsewhere…as the day progressed my mood altered from elation at the news, to scorn…not directed at my trivia partners…or the fine people of new york and their good fortune…but rather at our federal government ,whose credo of liberty and justice for all somehow excludes me…sacrificed to appease religious zealots whose desires for discrimination have no bearing in a land founded on a separation of church and state…my partner understood my attitude, sincerely, but offered this advice: ’think of all the gains we have seen in our lifetime’…

In 1978 I made my second trip to new york city, and was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman who became a lifelong friend…he was considerably older, at 42, than myself…merely 20...his was the Mattachine generation…they were homosexuals, not gay…they longed for freedom to just be themselves, but were considered officially to me mentally ill…uncle bruce, as i called him per his instruction lest anyone should question his association with a younger man, lived in a time when every queer he knew was in psychotherapy…he subscribed to the Mattachine newsletter under an alias and had it delivered to the address of one of his rental properties…his fear of being discovered governed his entire life…in his era, being found out would jeopardize his livelyhood…could conceivably have him ostracized by the social circles he traveled in…although he did have a few romantic involvements, he never was able to make a home with any of these men, and, in fact, preferred to pay for sexual favors rather than risk entanglements that might expose his secret…he was scandalized by the audacity of the stonewall rioters…he was sure they’d all pay for their involvement for the rest of their lives…his fear was deeply rooted and he never fully outgrew it…to the extent to which while he and I vacationed in Hawaii in the late eighties, he refused to dine at a gay owned and operated restaurant, for fear of being seen either entering or exiting the building…in Hawaii!…thousands of miles from home and business…he never entertained the idea that one day we might be accepted…never…

Today my partner and I live in a fringe community on the outskirts of Detroit…we live openly as a couple and our neighbors love and respect us, in fact our next door neighbor is also an ’out’ gay man…I have not kept my sexual identity closeted in any work environment in my entire life…I have been accepted and respected…my partner is not only ’out’ at work, but is part of the glbt task force for the company for which he works…his employer offers spousal benefits to same sex partners, enabling me to continue receiving healthcare while not employed traditionally…we travel extensively and are treated no differently than straight couples by the hospitality industry, and manage to find gay communities in even rural areas…do we want the right to be married?…absolutely!…is our life the hell it was for uncle bruce’s generation?…absolutely not!…so I didn’t get to celebrate pride in new york and experience the additional thrill of victory…I sat with my partner, an openly gay couple at the local vfw post, and felt welcome, liked, and proud…that my friends is progress…
Blog post
2 years ago
Views: 174

Illusion x582 Illusion x582

From: fredgasbury
Description:

Another in the series Wheels and Tires.
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Tire Jam Tire Jam

From: fredgasbury
Description:

From the series Wheels and Tires, relates to what you put on toast as well as a wild party.
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