Toll Road Followup

Award:

She's out there. La gran estúpida.

This really happened, this week:

Coming south, through the West Little York Toll Plaza, I'm in the Easy Tag Only lane and the usual morons are tying up traffic as they get into the Tag Only lane and then discover (or is it "discover" since I suspect that a lot of this is intentional) that they are in the wrong lane ... and they have to then block everyone while they try to nudge their way into one of the adjacent cash lanes.

So this woman in front of me, with an Easy Tag plainly visible on her windshield, begins to roll smartly along with the traffic as the morons clear away from in front of us.

She gets up to the Easy Tag reader and STOPS!?! (whereupon, I almost rear-ended her; and the guy behind me almost rear-ended me; and the guy behind him ... ad infinitum)

No horn from me, because I'm a REFORMED Road Rage Psychopath and every person has the right to drive safely and with the level of conservatism to which they are comfortable (gack! I want to retch every time I parrot those "good driver" platitudes.)

Away she crept from her stop at the reader. The toll gate went up (don't get me started -- yes, the damn things are back) she rolled up even with the gate and SHE STOPPED AGAIN.!! That ripped it.

She got the horn. I almost got rear-ended, again, and the other good drivers went wild with their horns.

She got moving, so out we all roll. I passed her and looked over to lay my most evil, rotten, "You're sooooo stupid!" dirty look on her but she won't look my direction. Ms. Gotta-stop has the pedal to the metal and is going to break the speed laws. On a mission.

Yeah, genius, stop twice in the toll gate but then get out there and drive 80 miles an hour while everyone else is doing 65-75. Makes perfect sense -- NOT.

That's O.K., I'll probably pass her in the next tool plaza after she stops suddenly, again, and causes a 37 car pileup. I'll save my "look" for then.

I Was Right All Along

I just knew that our old truck, Suzie Isuzu and I would get crosswise sooner than later.

O.K. Yeah, I’m spoiled. I’ve driven new cars for decades. After I’ve driven them awhile, they start to break, and I go get a new one. So, shoot me.

Regardless, there didn’t seem to be any sense in getting a new or near-new car for Costa Rica, driving it for a couple of weeks, then parking it in the garage for months, until our next trip to CR. Logically, we bought a 1994 ol’ beater. Dependable enough, but not breaking the bank. And NO PAYMENTS.

But then I started driving her and my love affair with Suzie started to sour:

• She burns oil.
• The rear doors are sticky and won’t always unlatch, without a jiggling and banging session. (And if somebody KEEPS slamming her seatbelt buckle in the door, they’re really hard to open.)
• The outside spare tire rack rattles and squeaks.
• THERE ARE NO CUP HOLDERS. ZERO! NADA. NONE!
• The driver’s window sometimes won’t go all the way up, leaving a tiny crack that whistles air and dribbles rain.
• Radio? There’s a radio?
• The front windshield washer doesn’t work.
• She stalls a lot when she’s cold.
• She burns a lot of that $6.00 per gallon gas.
• The hatch window lift gas struts are worn out. They won’t lift all the way by themselves and they leak down, slowly letting the window close on your noggin while you’re loading groceries.
• She smells like an old truck that has been used to haul everything except (maybe) dead bodies.

Waaah.

Then I remembered, “No whiners allowed in CR.” So I sucked it up and we started to get along.

Things were going pretty well one Monday, considering that I’d received 2nd degree burns across the top of my left leg that morning.

That afternoon, we had driven to Alajuela to see Maritza and Venicio and to introduce them to our daughter, Jenny, who had arrived from the States for a visit.

Time kind of slipped away during our visit and before you know it we were saying our goodbyes in the dusk. A short stop at a roadside restaurant put us out on the road home even later -- well into the darkness.

THUNK! Clang-ity-clang-cling-dinkle-dinkle-dinkle.

“What was that? Did you see anything in the road? We hit something,” I said to co-pilot, Pat.

“Didn’t see a thing, but yeah, I think we must have hit something,” she responded.

We drove for about 10 more minutes, putting us well up into the mountains, on the winding stretch with no shoulder and no pull-offs.

PHWUMP PHWUMP PHWUMP. I knew the sound and feel of a flat tire.

Absolutely no place to pull off. No way to stop on these blind curves … in the dark … with the pavement wet from the evening rains. Cripes.

Then a couple of those Pura Vida drivers started flashing their lights and honking their horns because: a)., I had a flat and was driving on it (duh); and, b)., I’d slowed down to below the speed of sound on these curves because, I brilliantly reasoned, a flat tire probably doesn’t get as much traction on wet pavement curves as does a fully functioning tire.

Tensions went up inside the cockpit as the girls tersely informed me that I shouldn’t be driving on a flat tire and that I needed to … well … uh … do something! Okey dokey.

It was probably at least a half mile before there was even the hint of a semi-flat spot along the shoulder of the road. I started in towards one and then saw that it was probably soft mud. Bailing back out onto the road irritated yet another Tico and earned me his ire, manifest by a little ol’ blast on his horn.

Thankfully somebody lives somewhere back in them thar hills as a driveway entrance suddenly loomed in the headlights. Driveway = flat (ish) and driveway probably = gravel. I pulled right in.

We’re parked at the top of a hill, at the end of a blind curve, about a foot off the road’s pavement. I hit the 4-way flashers. Yee-hah, they work. Score 1 for the home team!

O.K., we might as well get on with it. I knew the location of the jack due to an accidental discovery of its little hiding cubby while poking around inside one afternoon. That much we had going for us. And, oh yeah, we knew where the spare tire was … right there on the back hatch, always in the way. Two things going for us!

In very short order, the jack was out of its storage, and yippee, the lug wrench was in there too. Three things to the plus column!

You just know there are going to be some inhabitants of the minus column, don’t you. Bingo. You’re right.

First, pop that spare tire/wheel off the carrier on the back hatch. Slip the lug wrench onto the first bolt … skreeeek … it squeals loose and backs out; do the second one … ooof! … tighter but out it came … the third one should be easy because it’s on the bottom and I can put all 300 pounds down onto it. Nope.

By the time I was finished jumping up and down (painfully) on the lug wrench, the head of the bolt was starting to round off and there hadn’t been so much as a little “click” of promise out of the stubborn fastener. A couple of times I just let my arms drop to my sides, figuring that the game was over. That 3rd bolt was not coming out.

We momentarily discussed locking up the mess, calling a taxi and getting a wrecker to take care of the problem in the morning. That didn’t sound fun. One last go at it. The hell with how my leg was feeling, lean into the bolt head with everything I’ve got and then kind of fall down against the lug wrench. It squeaked a little! Re-purchase the bite on the bolt head … and pound down on it once again and it turned. That pig was completely cross-threaded – who knows how many years ago – and was probably hammered home with an impact wrench. It ground out of its hole by hand, but not willingly.

Pat started to cram the jack under the side of the car. But I knew that there must be some exact spot for this jack to go and that just anywhere wouldn’t work. What I didn’t know was that the inscrutable engineers at Isuzu had thought long and hard about how to set up their jack/vehicle “exact spot” in a location most likely to cause pain, anguish and suffering for any stupid old gringo loony enough to get a flat tire in the dark and then park over sloshy-wet mud/gravel. Oh, yeah. Let me.

I found the old owner’s manual in the glove box (amazing!) and dug into the “Changing A Tire” page. Oh, lord. The jack must be positioned directly under the rear axle, immediately next to the inside of the leaf spring bracket. In other words, WAAAAY the hell up under the stinking car.

Great. I’m dressed in cut-off jeans – cut off so that my bandaged leg didn’t have the pain of anything pressing against the burns – a brand new shirt and Crocs. Pura Vida. No whining.

Under the truck you go, boy. Not that hard. Just skud the jack through the mud and feel around in the dark (I had brilliantly taken our flashlight out of the truck the day before and forgotten to put it back.) The jack nested right up under the axle tube. The jack actuator wheel turned easily as the jack rose up and made contact. The actuator wheel stopped turning. That thing was going no further without a serious handle.

“Anybody see a jack handle?” No answer.

Dragged my bod up off the mud pan and started through every nook and cranny of that *&%$ truck. Nothing. Yikes.

Oooo. Oooo. The owner’s manual.

Remember those inscrutable Isuzu engineers that designed the lift point for the jack in an impossible place? Well, the same guys were on the team to find a place to put the jack handle. Without the owner’s manual, nobody would ever find it. Ever.

Here’s the trick. The rear seat and seat back fold down to give extra load space. While folding the seat forward, the very underside of the seat becomes visible. It is completely covered with the same carpet/fabric as are the floors. That (I guess) is supposed to be a clue. “Why would anybody upholster the underside of the seat?” you’re supposed to ask yourself. As you may have guessed, with a clever array of Velcro closures, the underside upholstery peels away. And, there, amid the springs and foam rubber, are little clips holding the two long jack handle pieces.

Oh, uh, but they are just straight bars. No handle off to one side so that you can crank the durn things.

Owner’s manual is no help on this one.

Search, search, search. The girls looked everywhere while I lay on my back underneath Suzie trying as best I could to turn the jack’s wheel with no crank.

“Are you SURE that there isn’t a handle under the seat somewhere?”

Jenny is standing near my feet, holding the lug wrench. “What does this little slot do?” She asked, examining the lug wrench handle.

Sure enough, punched through the middle of the lug wrench handle was a little slot that I guess we were supposed to simply know was the exact size of the flats machined on the end of the jack handle. What a leap of logic.

O.K., now I bet you’re thinking that all I had to do was to just slide that handle in place and spin the jack up.

Nah. Isuzu has engineers.

Some feces-face little geek in god-knows-where, Japan, designed this jack’s gearing so that the jack handle, which is already too long to rotate a reasonable arc beneath the truck, can’t possibly exert enough force to lift the truck smoothly, given the normal strength of a regular person. You get to lay on your back, way under the truck, let out a karate shout, while simultaneously pushing with all your might on the jack handle. It moves a quarter turn and then clangs into the truck’s undercarriage. (If you pull on the handle, you just lift yourself up out of the mud.) Re-set the handle for another push and repeat.

So with way more effort than I EVER expected to put forth while on vacation, I grunted and groaned the damn truck up a good two inches.

I was resetting the wrench/handle when I perceived the truck moving. I shouted something to the girls and did a twisting roll out from under the truck as it slid in the mud and fell off the jack.

Hey, this is getting fun. Now the gauze on my legs is fully saturated with mud – it feels really good – and we get to start all over again.

The girls went on a rock hunt and somehow came back with several stones big enough to wedge under the tires, ensuring that Suzie wouldn’t take any more unplanned strolls.

I went back at it and finally got the beast up high enough to remove the flat.

But not high enough get the new tire onto the lug studs.

Crank; clang. Crank; clang. Crank; clang. And then the engineers struck one final time. Ya see … they didn’t want to waste all of that money designing and building those fine jacks with ¼” of extra, useless lift capability … so they didn’t. The ol’ jack ran out of travel and quit with, oh, maybe 1/16 of an inch of clearance under the spare as it finally slid onto the studs.

But it went on and the girls took over the final installation and tightening of the lug nuts. And the jack cranked right down, with ease, so long as the weight of a whole damn truck was pressing it down.

Within 15 minutes we were home, covered in mud and grit (all 3 of us). Those on-demand water heaters proved to be up to the task because we all wanted and took some really long showers.

I love this car.

An Obvious Name

If you are sensitive to strong language, swearing, cursing, invective or whatever you want to call nasty words -- do NOT read any further. Go away.

If you are under 21, go away.

Are you ready?

This is serious stuff.

This is going to be rough.

Take a deep breath and hold on.

Here we go ...

If you've been over to the family blog, you know that we bought a car down in CR and Pat thinks we should give the new wheels a name. She even has a survey over on that blog so that you can vote for a suggested name or even suggest one of your own.

When she asked me to suggest a name, I immediately knew what to call the new buggy. This critter is a 1994 Isuzu Rodeo. Remember those old tanks? Solid.

But, being 14 years old and having seen a lot of duty on some pretty rough roads, I'm betting that this old lizzie will hear some invectives from me (gasp!).

{I've been trying to get rid of this bad invection, but I'm pretty sure that this is a Multi-Antibiotic-Resistant Invection (MARI). Groan.}

Seriously, here's the name:

"Fucking Car."

Perhaps even, "The Fucking Car."

Why, you ask?

Think about it. How convenient that name would be and how easily it will roll off my tongue.

When going out for a ride, or shopping:

"Get in The Fucking Car."

When coming home:

"Get out of The Fucking Car."

Let's say you're out for a day of shopping at the big mall and it has been so long since you arrived that you can't remember:

"Where's The Fucking Car?"

You can blame things on it with an innocent tone in your voice:

"The Fucking Car broke down in front of the bar, so I just went in to look for a mechanic."

Think about getting a flat tire:

"The Fucking Car has a fucking flat tire!"

What if, during idle conversation about exercising, you need to determine if your partner really feels like a jog or a ride:

"Do you want to take The Fucking Car or walk?"

As old as it is, it will certainly cost me repair money, whereupon I shall say, disgustedly:

"That Fucking Car."

I've already felt the vibes from Pat and I don't think The Fucking Car will formally initially be known by this name I'm suggesting. That's O.K. Everyone knows that it will eventually shed its cute anthropomorphic name in deference to the name it will answer to.

I'm taking The Fucking Car on a beer run. So there.

Bagging On Bags

I'm sure you've noticed that every product that comes with a storage bag -- air mattresses, tents, sleeping bags, quilts, etc., -- all come with storage bags that are sized so that the intended contents can only be folded small enough to fit back into those bags if you are a professional "Folder," working from a Folding Blueprint, and have arms and hands as powerful as Popeye.

If you're a normal person, chances are that your best efforts, along with multiple re-folding attempts, will only result in a lump of product that either won't go into the storage bag at all or which sticks out of the end of the bag.

WHY?!?

Message to manufacturers: You shit heads! I'm paying hundreds of dollars for your stinking product and you can't spend 30¢ to enlarge the stinking bag ... oh, maybe get crazy and slip in 6 whole inches ... so that normal people can put their valuable purchase away after using it. Sheesh!

The Stir Star Awards (Toll Road Division)

For those of you who don’t have toll roads or may not even know what they are, please indulge me. Read on. You might recognize a stirring performance that you’ve seen elsewhere.

The guy in the full service pay-lane that waits until he is stopped in front of the toll booth before he leans over to fish out his wallet; and, then he has to dig around in it to come up with the appropriate folding money.

Why am I in the full service lane anyway? Ya gotta be here in Houston to know. At some toll plazas (like the West Little York, on the West Sam Houston) if you are getting on the toll road at Little York, to go south, you are barred from using the main automatic lanes. And, the toll road authority brain trust has decided to only install a single automatic lane for EZ-Tag and that usually backs up beyond belief. Thus, if you want to get home while supper is still hot, it is quicker to go to a different lane. Sometimes the full service lanes look like they’re moving faster. That’s when I end up there.

Now, why is it such a reach for me to expect a person to plan ahead just a little … and BE CONSIDERATE (you clod!) of the dozen cars behind you. We don’t need to watch you finger through a wad of bills in your wallet while you select THE special dollar that you’ve been saving for years, just in case you ever have to pay a toll. Get that shit out before you even start to drive, dunce boy.

Taking your foot off the gas at the electronic toll gates, over on the EZ-Tag-only side.

Oh, all right, these people probably only deserve 1 stir, but this is a pet peeve of mine.

And, admittedly, there are signs that tell you to slow down and even signs that tell you to slow to 45 but this is the only State on Earth where some fools actually do it. Some states (e.g., Illinois) have even built the automatic lanes far away from the cash lanes, separating them by berms and trees. They command you to not slow down.

So, WHY do so many Houstonians slow down?

Are you afraid that the Tag reader won’t be able to read your Tag? It works on radio waves, Einstein. They’re travelling at more than 186,000 miles per second. Do you really think you can drive fast enough so that the speed of light waves cannot get down to your car and then be received in the return signal?

Scared of other drivers changing lanes right up at the readers and that they then might side-swipe you? We’re only changing lanes because people like you are impeding the flow of traffic when you slow down, pudding head.

And, what’s with you people at the Westheimer Plaza? What is so special about your fears and foibles that you need to slow down to stop & go for the automatic lanes? Who starts that mess? Please, some cowboy, shoot them.

Stop it. Just stop it. Keep your stinking foot smashed down on that stinking little narrow pedal on the right.

On the side of the toll road where EZ is mixed in with Full Service, getting into the EZ-Tag-Only lane when you don’t have an EZ-Tag.

Are you truly that unaware of your surroundings? Or are you just a mega-turd that thinks he’s getting to the head of the line … screw the rest of the world.

What happens, is that all of the lanes are filled up with long lines of cars needing to pay cash. In our single lonely EZ-Tag lane, the traffic usually moves significantly faster because we don’t have any clown digging under his seat for loose change.

Note to HCTRA: I’ve written to you jack-wads twice about leaving gates down across EZ-Tag lanes. One of your little minions even admitted that she couldn’t think of any reason why they are left operational. TAKE THOSE DAMNED GATES OUT!!!!!

Back to the story …

So, while we are moving reasonably steadily (5 mph,) down the long canyon created by lines of cash-pay cars, inevitably some anti-Mensa either doesn’t notice that he’s in the EZ-Tag Only lane or he’s trying to get to the head of the class. Either way, he then tries to push his way out of the Tag lane and into one of the cash lanes.

But it can’t be done. The cash lanes are at a dead stop and they only creep along one car length at a time. We, then, are trapped behind this clever person, building up our own traffic backup.

Please, oh please, give me Sidewinder missiles on my next car.

Stopping fully in front of the toll gate in an EZ-Tag lane when you have an EZ-Tag.

Ohmigod! What are you thinking!?! Oh … right. You haven’t the capacity to think.

Very close to these people are the folks that make a mistake in lane selection and then not only stop, but they begin to back up. I’m not making this up.

Patricia and I were driving back home one day, at about 75 mph (oh, get over it). She was driving and talking to me. I was lazily semi-focused on the road ahead as I listened. Something caught my attention. Something didn’t look right in the traffic way up ahead at the toll plaza.

Once the old synapses processed the message and I shouted, “Car backing up!” Pat barely had time to react. She got into a different lane and we went by that 7-stir. As we sped away down the road, I watched him in the side view mirror, expecting to see a fireball as he got run over by an 18 wheeler but, alas, no fireworks that day.


That’s the rant for the day. Many of the wackos that I mentioned in earlier posts about Houston drivers are doing their surface street tricks up on the toll roads, also. Sometimes it is just too bizarre to even award stirs.

Why are they breathing my air?

Flummoxed

I B Flummoxed. How else can I be?

A bit of background:

My company uses fairly large quantities of hydraulic oil. So, rather than have a zillion steel drums sitting around, we store our oil inventory in 275 gallon "totes."

Totes look like giant cubic plastic boxes. Picture your favorite refrigerator box-wine large enough to hold 275 gallons. Now, replace the cardboard wine box with a steel cage and make the plastic bag have thick enough walls so that it holds its shape. That's a tote.

But, because anything can leak, and because neither I nor the EPA want hydraulic oil running down the street in rivers, all users of big quantities of hazardous liquids are required to set up "secondary containment" around or under all "primary" containers. In other words, if the tote leaks, it has to leak into a tub or something so that it is contained for disposal.

For totes, we use specially made "pallets" that look like a monstrous kid's square wading pool, with a thick grill over the top. The totes sit on this grill and if they leak, the oil simply drops down into the "wading pool."

However, the secondary containment pool has a finite volume. If you let the pool fill up and don't empty it, then subsequent leaks would overflow the pool and run out on the floor. Therefore, one would think that every person would think of that when they saw the pool filling up, over time. Wouldn't one always strive to keep the secondary empty and dry?

One would also think that folks working around these totes and their secondary containment pools would object to the smell of the hydraulic oil emitting up from the pool, if you leave oil in it.

Finally, one would think that just out of general good housekeeping practices that workers wouldn't want all of that leaked oil sitting around out in the open. Oil just seems to get everywhere when you have it out in the open.

BUT ... our pudding heads are not (apparently) folks that think or act in any of the ways that "one" would think!

My morning:

Arrived at 8. Plugged in my laptop and booted it. Shuffled a little paper and decided that it would be a good time for me to do a sweep through the shop, ensuring that safe work practices are being observed.

Walked out the door, into the shop, and there's a tote, perched on its secondary containment, with piles and piles of granulated absorbent heaped up around it.

"What's going on?!?" I gasped.

"That funny tub thing got a leak," said one of the braver workers.

"How ... uh ... wha ... hey. How would the secondary leak? It's supposed to be empty?" I spat out.

"No. It always has a lot of oil in it ... at least since they were filling those hoses the other day and spilled a whole bunch down in there," said Brave Boy.

"No," I said back, "No, there is never supposed to be ANY oil in the secondary containment unless the tote leaks!" I said, starting to lose it.

"I didn't know," said Brave Boy, now meekly.

I'm thinking, "Yeah, but there are a half dozen "old salts" standing around you that know damn well that there isn't supposed to be oil in the secondary," but I sucked it in and kept the thoughts to myself. Time for a safety meeting -- for sure!

"Wait," I said, "That's a new secondary. How could it leak?"

Now the troops within ear shot are starting to look REALLY busy. Way too busy to be a part of this conversation.

Brave Boy goes on, "Well, we were sliding the plastic thingy into the pallet rack and when he backed out, his forks were tilted up too much and he ripped a hole in the bottom of the thingy."

Two more stirs.

The metal cage around the tote has fork lift channels under it so that one can lift these totes up off of the secondary containment for filling or discharging them. Steel. Strong. Fully protecting the tote's plastic bladder. In contrast, secondaries have narrow, thin PLASTIC grooves under them so that you could, if you were stupid, lift directly under the plastic wading pool to lift the pool and the tote, together, as a unit. Well over a ton of load on the little pool bottom.

Huh. I wonder why it split?

So-ho-ho-ho-ho, now I have a ripped open, useless $2,000.00 secondary; plus, another 10 gallons or so of liquid contaminated (hazardous material) oil to pay someone to dispose of; plus several 40 lb bags of "kitty litter" oil sorbent, soaked with oil (hazardous material) to also pay someone to dispose of.

Maybe if I'm lucky, tomorrow somebody will jam a forklift fork through this tote's steel cage and gash the plastic bladder open. I've always wanted to see if those oil containment booms work well. I wonder if we can get them deployed before the oil seeps under the office wall and into the office carpet?

Learning From Our Mistakes

What ever happened to “learning from our mistakes?” Is this time-tested precept of the higher apes also passing away as a distant memory of a few elders in the clan of mankind?

One of our “experienced,” albeit newer, employees was hired to lead some teams and sort of take care of the newbies and the dolts, thereby avoiding losses, embarrassments or accidents. To hear this guy’s personal testimony, he’s waged wars, fought fights, conquered countries and validated virgins from Timbuktu to infinity and beyond. One would think that there had been a few teensy mistakes along the way and our hero, who I call “Slinky,” should have learned a thing or two.

Nah.

Many weeks ago, my company mobilized large machines, portable control rooms and gobs of tools to rig out an offshore demolition boat. (Our parent company manufactures machinery that cuts apart pipe and steel structurals, under the sea.)

A critical little tool – a cutter – is terribly expensive for its size so we don’t keep hundreds of them on the shelf. We don’t have to. One of these palm sized little cutters will zip a 3-inch diameter hole through a sunken deck plate in minutes and keep on “punching” more holes all day. At almost $500.00 each, they better. So, we had only about 20 of them in stock.

Slinky supervised the load-out of the equipment for this boat, knowing full well that this would be only one of many boats to be equipped from our inventory. But, a couple of days after everything was shipped out, the boss, Tree Tall, went looking for a few of these cutters to be used in a demonstration. The shelves were empty.

“Where’d they go?” he wanted to know.

“Well, I sent them all out to the boat,” said Slinky, lamely.

With no love in his voice, Tree asked, “So what were you planning to send out on the next boat?”

No answer.

That’s when I got sucked into the fray.

Tree wanted at least two (preferably 3 or 4) cutters for his demonstration; and, he knew that another boat was coming up for outfitting in a couple more weeks. He turned to me to locate more cutters.

I contacted all the vendors and discovered that our normal cutters were 4 to 6 weeks delivery. Another vendor proposed an alternate cutter design which we accepted out of dire need. We cleaned that guy’s inventory out, bringing all 10 of the available alternate cutters into Houston on Fedex Next Day. I also promptly put in an order for 10 more from the usual vendor who would build them to our regular specifications.

I sort of lost track/interest in the cutters after that, although I did notice that “da boyz” were doing several extra demonstrations that might eat into the cutter supply. No worries, I thought. These guys have just been through the wringer over these things and they’ll tell me when they need more cutters. Besides, in about a week we should have the second order of ten pieces.

Then came an order for a third boat.

And in came an order for a training demo.

Both used these hard to find cutters.

But, I’m not aware of these events, so I don’t bump up the inbound order quantity.

This immediately past Saturday, Slinky and da boyz worked like maniacs to get everything out the door for boats two and three. The training demo is tomorrow (for divers who will eventually work from one or more of the boats we’d outfitted.)

Today, Tree wandered out into the Houston shop to grab cutters for the training demo.

“Who moved the 3-inch cutters?” he said. He probably had a knot in his stomach, fearing that he knew the awful answer. He dialed Slinky’s cell phone. “Where are the 3” cutters, Slink?”

“Why? I sent them to the boat.”

Worst fears confirmed.

“All of them,” said Tree, more as a statement of resignation than a question. He looked at me. I shrugged. He shook his head. The same stupid move had been made again.

The 6-week-delivery cutters aren’t due in for another couple of days. I found one dusty old cutter on a vendor’s back shelf and that’s the best we can hope for.

Do I think that there’s a possibility that Slinky and his team learned anything this time?

What do you think?