The tree on the Exploder (Explorer) Saga

In part one, the tree crushed my Explorer, or at least I helped the tree crush my Explorer. I told my son Ed, who lives near Colorado Springs about it that night. The next morning, he sends me an email to go to a Craig's listing for a car in Denver. I'm pretty set on just trying to put a new door on the thing, but I open up the link and there is my car! Same model (but a year newer '94), same color, only 71,000 miles (with a Tule rack on top). And it is priced at about what I'm going to have to put into my 269,000 model to get it up to speed.
Long story short, Ed drives to Denver that afternoon, picks up my sweetie, Kris, at her house and they go to Thornton, test drive the car, give the guy a hand full of greenbacks and I'm in wheels again.
I've decided it was the universe's way of telling me that I needed a new car. That, of course, is less painful than admitting I was a dummy in the first place!
Kris is bring it down on Friday. I'm going to share with you what my plan was. I was not going to tell anyone, then I was going to post a photo of myself pouring a bottle of Monavie into the old car's gas tank. Then the next day I would post a photo of the new car with a caption that Monavie does wonders. I decided the company's compliance department might get a little fired up!
And, really, I'm just happy to drink it to keep me going!
So a big shout out to Ed for all his help and to Kris for missing Star Dancing to go along and bringing it home. And to all my friends who pointed out that this was not an unusual happening!

Why would I ever share this story?

I know that you are going to think, “Why would someone share this story?”
Well the answer is that there is not way to hide what happened and to be perfectly honest, when it happened, I couldn’t quit laughing. Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself!
So, I got home from Nicaragua on Thursday morning and never made it to the cabin as I had to fly to Phoenix on Friday to do appraisals at the Heard Museum and, after working late, I decided to stay at my mom’s house. On Sunday, I flew back from Phoenix with one goal on my mind: I needed one more tree to have enough firewood in the pile to make sure I’d last the winter and I was going to do that Sunday afternoon.
Unfortunately, it was the first major snowstorm of the year and, being a little wet, the road to the cabin was pretty slick. I go to the cabin, built a fire to warm it up (remember I hadn’t been there in a couple of weeks and it was 29 inside and 27 outside).
Then, I got the chainsaw and walked to the bottom of the driveway, which is pretty steep, especially in slick snow, and proceeded to cut a notch in a large, about 40 foot, aspen tree that had been dead for years.
My plan was to lay it down on the driveway, then cut it into sections, load them into the back of the Ford Explorer, take them to the top of the hill, cut them into smaller sections and then split them into fireplace logs. A good plan.
When the notch was in the right side of the tree, I began to cut the other side to create a week point where the tree would break and fall the direction I planned. That’s when the problem began.
This huge wind came up and the tree began to bread the wrong way. Snow is swirling around and it was like being in a white tornado. The tree leaned back and trapped my saw, but did not break all the way.
So, I’ve got the saw stuck and the tree about ready, at any minute, to fall onto the main road. Now there wasn’t any traffic, but I couldn’t just leave it there figuring I’d get the saw after it fell as it might hit someone on the road and could hit a phone box that my neighbor is hooked up to. Not good. It was too heavy to push the correct way and the wind was whipping around making me nervous as it could have snapped and nailed me if I was in the wrong place.
So, I devised the perfect plan. I walked to the top of the hill, got the Ford Explorer (269,000 miles) and backed it down the hill. I got a rope and tied it about six feet up on the tree, then tied the other end to a tow chain attached to the car. I was thinking that I could drive up the driveway and the rope would pull the tree the correct direction.
I also figured that the rope was long enough that the tree would fall behind the car. Right.
So, I put it in 4 wheel low and started up the hill. The miscalculation occurred partially because I might have underestimated the height of the tree or I might have underestimated the length of the rope.
I also didn’t count on the rope tightening and the car losing it’s traction on the slick surface at the same time.
At any rate, it made one hell of a noise when it hit square in the center of the back of the roof. It smashed the roof in about six inches, blew the back window out and bent the top of the window in.
This is when I had to laugh. I mean, what do you do? So I pried the back door open, went ahead and cut the logs and then took them up the hill, and cut them up as planned.
While I was doing that, it occurred to me that I might put a couple wheels of the tree in the back of the Explorer, put a jack on top of that and then jack the roof back into position so that I could at perhaps go the the junkyard and get an old back door (preferably the same color) and make it work.
It actually worked well, the only problem was that the back door that is on the car would now not close. Duh? So, I reconfigured the jack and bent the car door until it matched the roof line. I should have been a body shop guy!
Then I duck taped the window with plastic and heck, almost like new. I’d am trying to get 300,000 out of this car, so it’s going to be interesting to see what happens as far as a new door in the next day of so. In the meantime, it’s nine pm and there is a foot of snow outside.
So, just remember it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you deal with it. I’m slamming an extra shot of Monavie and hitting the sack!