Name that Truck

From Gary: This weekend we will be painting the exterior of the house. Our dear friend Al is a pro and did the pressure washing and prep yesterday (Friday). Today the rest of the trim will go up along with some last-minute filler and primer and the masking and painting will begin in earnest. Hopefully the weather will be perfect and the project will be done in only two days. The last time I painted my house it took nearly a month to find good weather days that coincided with with any time off I could scrounge up ( a pretty wet June, that one...)


Work continues on the interior as we press on towaard the goal of being mobile. What do you do with boxes and boxes of books that were your private library? How will we 'dispose' of the 20 or so photo albums with 'precious' prints that go back as far as 1917? The trinkets, toys, electrical gizmos and "what-if-I-need-that-someday" items that formerly occupied shelves and drawers have all got to find a new home somewhere, somehow, because we simply won't have room for much beyond the essentials (and we are still trying to learn what exactly is 'essential').


We did determine that if we're going to be pulling our home around, and if it's going to weigh in the neighborhood of 16,000 pounds, the Ford F-150 that we owned wasn't up to the task. It's taken about 4 months of research and shopping but we finally did find a very nice, slightly used, Ford F-350 right here in Longmont. While we had been around to see several other trucks already, from Fort Collins to Denver, nothing felt quite right as a total package. I came relatively close to a purchase in Denver, but after we were kept waiting for about 45 minutes I went back out to the vehicle with my flashlight and started crawling around. In the end we decided not to buy it as there was a considerable amount of rust inside the cab. The seat tracks, power seat motors, and even the springs I could see were quite rusty; not at all normal for a one-year old truck. Something seemed odd to me when I first saw the truck, and I'm thankful that I took that second, deeper look into it. While I propbably could've struck an amazing deal on the vehicle, it would've been a big project bringing it back to shape and we don;t need any more projects right now.

So, we found the one here in Longmont and closed the deal on Thursday evening. Very, very nice pulling vehicle, room for 5 folks and a full size bed for motorcycles (grin). It's a 2008 model, but used already, so we got it for much, much less than a new one (someone else had taken the big 'drive-it-off-the-lot-and-lose-$20k" hit. We're very, very pleased with the truck (having had it for a whole day now) and we'll see what to do about a hitch next week.
OK, it's a big, long, diesel powered, 4 X 4, dual-rear-wheel monster of a truck with a huge 'cow-catcher bumper up front and we're trying to come up with a name other than "Tom" (dually, that is). We're strongly considering "Frank" because of the movie "Cars" .. you remember 'tractor-tipping' ??

I will post a couple of pictures in a day or so, when I can grab a few minutes, but I'm liking this so far. I have been joking (since this is a big truck with a big engine) that I have been riding motorcycles most of my life and have spent a major portion of my time commuting at 50+ miles per gallon, so now the environment owes me one ... (grin) ... not really, but it will be a different 'Carbon Footprint" than the KLR. It's a tool, for a purpose, and we're grateful to be able to do this.

Now, we need a name...