Driving Miss Nellie

I got to drive Whoa Nellie Walton today.  Well, actually I got to steer Whoa Nellie.  She doesn’t run and did I mention she doesn’t have any brakes.  It seems My Loving Spouse has been ‘making steady progress’ on her and she needed a bath, or her engine cleaned or her gunk cleared.  Whatever, it was determined that taking the truck to the water would be easier than taking the water to the truck, so we did.

Notice the heavy chain…all we had to do was pull her out of the workshop across the yard (missing the chicken coop), through a gate and stop at the garage.  The whole ‘stopping part’ is what I’d call ‘hopeful slowing down’ as there are no, none, zip, zero, nada brakes.  I still stepped on the brake pedal, because that is what I am inclined to do when seated behind the wheel of a vehicle to which I’d like stopped, but still, it doesn’t help.

Putting her back into the workshop was going to take a bit more maneuvering, pushing the non-running truck backwards, lining it up to go back through the gate, turn around the chicken coop, straighten it up and push it back into the work shop again…none of this with power, very much room or as I might have mentioned….brakes.  My Loving Spouse asked if I wanted to be the Driver/Pusher in the running truck or the Steering Driver of the non-running truck.  I opted for steering the truck with no brakes (AND no seat…just a up-turned bucket), because I figured with no power and no brakes, if anything went wrong it couldn’t actually be my fault…all I had to do was steer….and hopefully slow down.

Being practical and thinking things through, we did have a back up plan and a reliable method of communication, should I need to alert My Loving Spouse aka Driver/Pusher that things were not going well on my end…

…truly never a dull moment.