It's funny, I think to myself.  Here we are, it's the middle of Superbowl Sunday afternoon, and I'm in the woods next to a barn with a straight razor in one hand and an empty oil quart in the other.

Most people are getting all situated for the festivites to begin later in the p.m., driving out to their buddies' houses or to expensive, sweaty, noisy sports bars or to the grocery store to buy chips and booze but here we are with our hands full of rust and dirt and our stomachs empty. And I can't find a damn funnel to pour oil into the engine with, and I just spent 20 bucks on a gas can, and I'm laughing.

Do you realize, I say to crashbox, how retarded this is.  How utterly....retarded this has become.  I hold up the razor and the quart bottle, and he looks, grins and goes back underneath the dashboard to install the oil pressure gauge.  I slit the bottle all the way round, taking extra care not to slit my hand open and contract tetanus.  I balance the half of the bottle with the spout in it carefully against the brake fluid reservoir and dump five more quarts of oil into the crankcase.

It was my job to feed the thing with fluids while crashbox tried to massage the kinky electrical system into some form of functioning order.  The expensive gas can and it's star trek child proof spring loaded plastic schnozz actually functioned somewhat and I was able to dribble 4.5 of 5 gallons into the rusty maw of the gas tank.  This complete, I proceeded to fill the radiator with water from the barn hose. (Coolant is cheap, yes, but time isn't and one can transport only so many bottles of liquid on a motorcycle, even a motorcycle with an epic tail box like mine.  All the space was taken up with oil)  Leaves bubbled up from the inner depths of the radiator and floated about near the filler neck.  This can't be good.  This, in fact, necessitates removal of radiator, a brisk turning-upside-down and shaking.  Something I will do next time I come, because here we are with the electrical system and it's 4 pm already and for all intents and purposes the working day is over.  We were supposed to be done by about 3 pm.

And still nothing from the ignition switch.  crashbox curses silently to himself.  I lean on the fender glumly.  Electrical's a pain in the ass, literally, but the good news is that there's only so much of it on a 1969 Chevrolet truck with one option: an AM radio.  We wonder aloud exactly where in the inaccessible area of the starter we are ceasing to have electrons move. 

The Proprietor of The Ranch emerges from the inky depths of the shop with a length of lampcord.  "All you have to do is wire this end" he holds up one end "to the battery" pointing "and the other end to there and bypass the starter completely.  It's stupid.  I don't know why they wire it that way.  Has nothing to do with getting to the switch."  Crashbox gathers his crimper and wire crimps and begins to twist the two wires together.  They won't fit inside the largest crimp he has.  So he begins to strip one strand of wire from the outer housing.  He glances at the sun and thinks better of it, abandons the stripping and crimps one strand to the battery lead leaving the other loose.  The other end of the same strand goes to the purple wire that snakes down behind the rotted hood raingutter and disappears.  The unused strand of wire glistens next to the the battery.  This is goofy, but it will work and we will fix it later.

...there are so many things we WILL fix later...