It is snowing outside! Looks like a blizzard out side my window and I have to drive North to Layton this evening. Oh well its Spring and I guess these temperature fluxes are part of the season.
Last night I got home to find Dianne had been swamped all day with taxes and resume development for her up coming job interview. She was going to take my van to my lift mechanic to fix my lift gate. I could see Dianne was swamped so I decided I would drive over to Lowe’s and get the part myself. Since the shop where I usually take my van is closed by the time I home from work.
On the bridge-plate of my lift, that piece of metal which folds down and “bridges” the space between the lift gate, itself, and the floor of the van. On each corner of the bridge-plate is a short rod on which a aluminum tube is fit over. The tube acts as a guide for the bridge-plate to fold up to the vertical position when the lift is stowed. If this sluminum piece is gone, for any reason, the plate will not fold properly, jam and buckle and my cause great damage to this expensive piece of equipment used for personal independence. I had to have this piece in place by this evening when I drive, by myself, up to Layton.
The evening was actually warm as the storm of today approached making the trip Lowe’s atually enjoyable being out in the evening doing my “guy thing”. I have been known to squander hours trying to find an item a place like Lowes. I now know ‘just ask’. It has taken a life time to learn the skill of just asking. So, I found “Bob” told him what I needed and he directed me to follow him over to Electrical. Which I did. And sure enough after rooting through whole much metal tubes found exactly what I needed: a 36 inch tube of half inch aluminum. The I told Bob this would work perfectly, now, I just need to have the piece cut to a length of eight inches. Well, Bob was taken back but after a second told me to follow him, to Plumbing. Plumbing was way over on the other end of the store. Thank God, I was in my power chair, I can still remember these jaunts back and forth across a tore this large not only tore my hand s up literally wore me out. A but last night I was zipping. I bought the piece of aluminum tubing but had ‘Bob” cut two pieces. One piece I ha ‘Bob” crimp the end flattening ( we had to go to ‘tool display’ for this) to find a vise to flatten the end the tube’ and put a curve in the tube, to guide the bridge-plate to the vertical position. In the parking lot I supressed the old guy, who had the misfortune of parking next to me, into helping me put the tubing over the rod and there was, ready for my trip to Layton.
The whole operation to me more then an hour—the evening was shot for anything else But I felt accomplished.
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