Greetings. Hope this formats ok.

I was taking a shower this morning and I slipped and I fell and I hit
my head on the tub. I hit it pretty hard

too and I think I must have been lying there for quite a while. Ya
see, I missed church I was lying there so

long. Mass was at 10 o'clock this morning and I'm fairly certain I
woke up at 6 am. I have this little Degen

DE1103 shortwave radio with a built in alarm clock that wakes me up
everyday at the same time. 6 am.
When I finally woke up I had a splitting headach, probably the worse
one I ever had in my whole life, and

these visions of potatos wrapped in tin foil and cooking on the
manifold of my battleship grey 1986 Dodge

D100 pickup truck. Hell, if I had a pistol in my hand I probably
woulda stuck that thing in my mouth and let

one rip just to get rid of that doggone headache. Anyway, trucks got
one of those slant six motors that

everybody says'll go a million miles. So with that slant six there is
only one exhaust manifold. It's kinda stuck

up there near the top of the motor with the intake manifold. Ya
following me so far? This truck here I'm

speaking of - it's not all battleship grey. A lot of it is, but there
still remains most of the passenger side to

paint which is still the color it was when I got it from Linda Brown.
A darker flavor of grey, quite a bit

darker. Linda Brown works over in the accounting department where I
work. Anyway back to... Oh,

sorry, sorry, the truck, one thing I wanted to tell ya., it's not
really battleship grey either. It's some color that

looks an awful lot like battleship grey. I know this because I used to
paint large navy vessels. I was a

sonarman, but when I got busted for smoking dope they made me a
Bosn'mate. Later on they changed their

mind and let me back into the sonar gang, but when I got busted for
dope the second time with an ounce of

hashish they made me a deck ape again and told me that was final.
Bosn'mates take care of painting the

ship, tying knots, keeping things looking good, driving the ship and
standing lookout watches and so forth.

They're REAL sailors. Not those sailors that hang inside drinking
coffee and refusing to step into the

daylight at the first sign of a cloud in the sky. Anyway, like I said,
I know battleship grey.

So there I was laying half in the tub and half on the floor with this
splitting headache and these visions of

potatoes cooking up on the exhaust manifold dancing thru my skull. I
dragged myself outta the tub and got

dressed and went down to the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee.
My wife, her name is Megan and I

really really like her a lot, she bought me some of those coffee bags
to make my coffee, and let me tell you,

I really like them. Plenty strong enough and real easy to deal with.
Just like a tea bag - ya know what I

mean?? Megan got em for me cause I'm going on this cross country MW
DXpedition. I'm going to try and

log as many little1kw and smaller AM broadcast radio stations as I can
on the way out to California. I figure

I'll head out to St Louis and take a left and head down old Rt 66. Now
Rt 66 is a little difficult to find these

days. A lot of it is gone, so when you go down Rt 66 you might not be
really going down Rt 66.

Sometimes you are, but other times you aren't. So you really need a
good set of maps to get yourself down

there. I got some in the mail a few weeks ago. I ordered them from
some guy on the world wide web. I

ordered them on a Sunday, he popped em in the mail on Monday and I had
them by Friday. I paid good

money for these things, but you gotta have em.

So I go outside with my coffee and I look up at the sky and it aint
lookin so hot. I'm supposed to be

painting the truck but it looks like rain. So I open the hood up on
the truck and damn if it doesn't look an

awful lot like what I was seeing in those visions that I was suffering
from the bump on my head. Back in the

house for some tinfoil and a potato. So I get this nice big spud all
wrapped up and shove it between two of

the intake manifold pipes. One of the exhaust pipes is directly under
the potato so I'm thinking this thing is

gonna cook up nice. I close the hood and get to work on the inside
compartment. Today I gotta get all the

electronics situated. I'm taking this old pickup all the way out to
California next week, so I'm going to have

to keep myself occupied. I'll probably end up spending about 100 hours
in that cabin over the next couple

of weeks and no one can be expected to just listen to an AM radio for
that long. And as far as

concentrating on driving - you can only take that so far too. Ya
following me here? So I picked up some

little connectors called power poles. They're little red and black
do-dads that you can stick on a wire and if

your other wire has one you can stick em together and make a electrical
connection. I bought em at a ham

radio event a few weeks back. They're colored cause you don't want to
mix up the positive and negative

polartities when your messing with car batteries.

I got another story about a base cop in Pearl Harbor, some beer, some
good dope, and a battery hooked

up backwards that you may find really really funny. If you get me high
someday I'll tell you the story. I don't

get high very often anymore, but if you show up with a joint I'll help
ya smoke it.

So I got this Little Degen DE1103 radio I told you about. It's a
really nice little radio but the audio sucks if

you don't use headphones. So this guy in work turns me on to some
amplified speakers that run off a wall

wart. I've been using them down in my ham radio shack to listen to an
Icom R-75 receiver. An R75 is a

nice little radio, but it has it's own set of quirks. Audio sucks like
the worse thing I ever heard and the sync

detector doesn't work for ****, but there are some mods that'll make
the thing work nice. Even all modded

up it still ain't no Drake R8B. I needed some cash so I sold the
Drake.

Hey, wait a minute here. I'm listening to Timtron here and I know he's
on Saturday night. No wonder I

didn't find anybody at church today, it's Saturday. Mass is tomorrow.
Great! So I sold the Drake because

the wife needed a kidney transplant and had been bugging me for a long
long time about it. Ya know how

girls can get. They get something in their head and they never stop.
Yackity yak yak yak. Nothing a good

brain transplant wouldn't take care of - so I'll probably have to sell
another radio soon. So I finally gave in

and sold the Drake - I hope she likes her new kidney.

So I open up these little amplified speakers Randy gave me and do a
little re-wire job and stick some power

poles on it and away I go. I stick it on my battery eliminator and
plug the Degen DE1103 into them babies

and now we got something we can listen to. So I velcro-ed the speakers
to the dash. I'll probably stick

some velcro on top of my cap on the back of my truck for when I get to
the campsite each day. My

daughter Robin is going to paint an American flag on top of the cap for
me tomorrow to let them big rig

drivers know I'm just like them. Snatch the speakers off the dash and
plop em down on the cap and I got

music to pitch a tent by. Not that the tent is going to take any time
to get put up. You put up a tent lately? I

swear the tents they're selling these days can almost set themselves
up. Gotta get em lashed down good

though cause they'll take off like a tumbleweed if ya turn your back on
em. Now I got this Yeasu 2meter

ham radio that I'm going to bring along and a CB radio too. So I need
to make all these connections. I got

a cell phone charger to bring too and this same dude Randy that gave me
the amplified speakers gave me a

radar detector to bring too. I think I'll give him the radar detector
back. I don't like driving fast anyway.

Especially when somebody is tailgating me. I slow way down and try to
maintain two seconds between

vehicles when I get a tailgater on my ass. I especially like making
right turns when a tailgater is on my ass. I

slow way way down and almost stop when I make a right turn. So far
nobody has hit me but they usually

flip me off or start yelling F**K YOU or something like that. Heheh,
one day one of those spincters is going

to run into me and finance my retirement. Nothing fancy, just a small
place on a hill top with some big

antennas and a big metal barn that I can paint cars in.

So I made up this piece of plywood with a bunch of fuses and powerpoles
stuck to it and so forth to plug all

this stuff into. And then I get the CB radio antenna and the 2m ham
radio antennas stuck on and I'm good to

go. I was gonna head on up the hill by the highway and see how the
radio works on ch 19. That's the

trucker channel, but I don't know if they even like talking to people
who don't drive big rigs. I kinda ran out

of time so I didn't get the CB checked out. The little Degen DE1103
does a nice job even with the whip

antenna laying inside the truck across the dash. I'll try and get
something rigged up a little better for an

antenna. Maybe I'll try and get the regular outside radio antenna
hooked into the Degen. I think the

automakers still put these connectors on their antennas that wont
connect to anything but a car radio. I have

a AM/FM radio in the dash, but AM doesn't work at all, and FM kinda
sucks too. I like to listen to

Christan rock music on the Klove radio network, so I really need FM. I
like the classic rock too so I'll just

mix it up as I go along. I don't think Classic rock will get you to
heaven though. I had this Catholic priest

told me one time that it really didn't matter what you did here on
earth. He said as long as you listened to

Christian music and hung up some of those "I Love Jesus" air fresheners
in every one of your cars there was

no way you would go to HELL. I'm not too sure I'm going for that
though and I think I'll behave myself just

in case, and besides, I think that priest may have had some issues with
behavior himself.

So after I get the electronics pretty much situated I'm off to Wal-Mart
for some supplies. I really like

Wal-Mart cause them left winger tax and spend liberals don't like em
for some reason. Some kinda big

news today that Wal-mart is going to be selling prescription drugs at
reduced rates to help people out so the

left wingers will be eating some more **** over that. They seem to be
eating lots of **** lately, so I guess

maybe they've developed some kinda taste for it. Got some paint and
stars for the cap at Wallyworld and

then over to the auto parts store for some window tint and a just in
case bottle of stop leak for the radiator.

I don't really like people looking at me so the tint will keep em
wondering. I got some issues with paranoia

myself and better not to have people looking at me. I'll stick some
Harley decals on the back widow in the

cap. I ride a nice Black Anniversary Softail so I'm ok with sticking
the Harley decals on the truck. I got a

skull and crossbone flag that I'm going to fly on the antenna and maybe
a sign that says "GOT GUN?" on it

along with some NRA stickers. I got a big knife to hang on my belt and
a black eyepatch too for when I go

into Waffle House. Thge eye patch was a good find by my daughter.
Good thing it's close to Halloween.

Heheh, a guy would have to be a madman to want to mess with me. I
think I'll bring a baseball bat and a

glove to make the bat legal.

We don't have any Waffle House restaraunts around here. I'm going to
hit the one in Chambersburg, Pa for

sure. On the way home I stopped over to the Salvation Army for a small
pot and some Bar-B-Que tools

and then back home. Up here in New England we call em Cook Outs. I
really like going over to the

Salvation Army. The prices are good and the people that work there are
very nice. I'm going to abandon

this truck and everything in it cept for the radios. when I get to the
left coast so I can't see sinking a lot of

money into camping supplies. I'll probably try and find some migrant
Mexican worker who needs a truck

and just hand it over. Jesus told me if I give the truck away when I
get to Pacific side he will make sure I

have a safe journey. I really like that Jesus too. I got no idea why
I'm painting it except I don't want

everyone I meet across America to think I'm TTT - total trailer trash.
Also some Jose who gets the truck

maybe happier if his truck has a nice paint job on it.

One thing I reeeally reeeally hate is Mexicans thinking they can just
waltz in here and start picking fruit and

vegatables on a whim. I once said we should break out the weapons and
leave piles of dead Mexicans on

the border. Or invite em in and make real Mexican tacos out of em if
you know what I mean. Perhaps set

up machine guns on the border that people could access over teh
internet with credit cards. That line of

thinking is a little extream and I want to make a public apology for
even saying it. The fault is with Clinton

and Bush and the gov't, not the poor Mexican trying to make a better
life for his children. There is a large

and growing faction of Mexicano Pistoleros who are involved with drug
trafficing that presents a totally

different problem. I think we should reak out the weapons and leave
piles of dead Mexican Pistoleros on

the border.

You can see the difficult years on the faces of the shoppers over there
at the SA - Salvation Army.. You just

know they have quite a struggle to eek a living out. I prey that Jesus
will watch over those nice people.

Heheh, the lady in front of me at the check-out line pulled a visa card
out and charged almost 100 bucks for

clothes for her kid. As I was walking out of the store I could see her
pull out of the parking lot in a brand

new SUV.

The wife was home when I got there and we went over to the local
antique mall for a small wood box I'm

trying to locate. I build these big antennas called loops and they
have a tuning capacitor mechanism that gets

hooked into the thing. I'm going to take a few loops with me on my
journey, but only one tuning mechanism,

and I want to stick it in a nice box if I can find one. Some Anal
Orafice that lives around the corner from

me is on my ass when I'm heading over to the antique mall. I gotta
slow way way down to make a left turn.

Nobody in sight except the bunghole behind me. The wife giggles and
tells me he had a scowl on his face

and didn't look too happy going by me. That douche bag needs to eat
some bumper. Couldn't find the

exact box I needed so I told my wife she needs to build a woodshop in
the extra room in the basement. I

got my electronic workshop, ham radio shack, and weight lifting room
tying up the rest of the basment, but

there is enough room left for a nice little shop for her to do wood
crafts. I think I will make it a point to

make sure she gets all set up there when I get back. She deserves a
nice space to do what she likes. And I

need a place and a somebody to refinish old radio cabinets, so I'm all
for a nice little shop over there. Hell, I

got her that damn kidney transplant so I figure she can pimp out a few
radio boxes for me. Did see a nice

radio over there at Biz's father's booth in the antique mall. Damn if
I can remember the name or model of

that radio though. Biz is the cutest little button of a girl you could
ever meet. A real peanut. She used to

work for my wife at the Sir Charles Hallmark store before she went off
to college. And her parent's are

very very nice as well. If ya ever feel the need to clone some people
then these'd be the ones.

So when we get home the sun is peeking out so I grab a quart of my
Rustoleum Battleship Grey equivalent,

and a small 4" roller with a 3/16" pile and get to work on the driver
side. My compressor broke down so I

figured I'd give the roller topology a try. I sanded and rubbed out
the hood last week and you would have a

hard time telling it was done with a roller. Got to reduce it 20% or
so so it lays down nice and make sure it's

cool when you do roll it. I get the thing about rolled out and I have
to pop open the hood to get the top of

the fender without painting the hood, which I painted last week, and
what do you think I see? The shiny foil

gets my attention and I pull that potato out. I head into the kitchen
and cut that baby open. I slobbered

some butter on that baby and let me tell you that was one of the best
doggone baked potaters I ever had. It

wasn't cooked 100%, but I ate the 3/4 of that spud that was cooked all
the way through with a big ****

eating grin on my face. I'll be cooking manifold potatos all across
America starting next week.

73
NEO