Got the wheels on. Brakes??

10/2/06 Monday
I could have sworn I wrote in this journal since last Tuesday so I may have lost it. I’ll go online and check the blog cause that’s where it would remain if I lost it off the laptop. Had trouble getting it to shut down a little while ago and it was working so hard everything was slowed to a crawl. I need to buy more memory for it but our money is getting real tight. Put allot into the trailer. Speaking of that, it’s going to rain around noon according to the weather man so I need to get out there and run the wires under the truck for the electric brakes.

It’s 11:00 now. Just came in from working on the truck and I’m soaking wet. Sure enough the rain came but I kept working figuring that being underneath the truck I would be dry. Nope. As I worked on running two wires the entire length of the truck I had to crawl out and go to the other side. Besides that my legs were usually outside so between the rain and the collected water dripping off the sides of the truck staying dry wasn’t an option.

I thought twenty five feet of wire would be enough to run two lengths of wire but was way off on that. This is not unusual. One of the strange affects of the brain injury is great difficulty judging distance or volume. Picking the right container to store or prepare food is often just a guess. I’ll piece together enough wire to get the second wire run but the brake control wire I’ll leave one piece. That’s the one that is vital. The other wire is just to supply power to the overhead lights I’m putting in the trailer so that’s not critical at all.

The weatherman said that this rain will be coming and going till maybe 3:00. There’s lots of thunder and lightning outside right now and it doesn’t look like it’s letting up. Cherie just called to say she wouldn’t make the drive in this weather just to eat lunch at home and give me a kiss. I had some fun with her on that. I knew from the ring it was Cherie calling and I knew what she would say so I answered the phone “That’s a good idea honey. You’re right. Just grab something to eat out there. Don’t drive home in this weather”. There was a long silence as she tried to figure out what I said.

2:53 – I got the wire run under the truck and all hooked up. Hope I got them right. I’ve made quite a few mistakes during this whole process so we’ll see. The cardboard I had been using to lay on, thus keeping dry, was soaked so I’m wet again. All that’s left to do is attach the controller on the dash and hook it up. Then I get to learn how to use the brakes. There is no instruction manual on how to break them in though there is a mention of a need to do that on the one page installation sheet that came with the brakes.

I fixed one of the jalapeño cheese bratwurst we like so much for lunch and to get out of the rain. Actually the rain let up but there was a wicked wind that would come out of nowhere and throw things around. My hat took off to the nearest puddle of water so that protection from the rain was done for. The cardboard I would lay on would take off when I moved off it. One time the wind closed the drivers side door, the door to the tool section of the cap, and the hood on the truck, all at once.

It’s eased up a little. After I go online to see if there are some lost journal entries on the blog I will go back outside to get some work done.

Yeah, I did lose some days out of this journal. Thursday, Friday, and Sunday are posted on the blog so I’ll copy them and put them back on this laptop.

Well I got all the wires connected and the controller mounted. YEP, I HAVE BRAKES. It’s just that they are on all the time. They work great as the wheels just screeched as they refused to turn despite my dragging the trailer five feet. OK, not good. I unplugged the connector from the truck and tried to pull the trailer again. This time it works fine so the brakes weren’t just catching or something. I’ve got something hooked up wrong so I have to figure that out. That’ll have to wait till tomorrow. Of course it’s supposed to rain.



Don't want it to sound like I'm doing all the work. Here's Cherie packing. She has been doing this for days (Actually weeks off and on) and been busting her butt.






Isn't she pretty!