[COPY] Celebrating Resurrecting and Rebuilding Our Old Dump Truck

After many challenges, including an unexpected heat wave, we persevered over every obstacle to rebuild and renew our old 1981 Dump Truck

THE DAWNING LIGHT # 93 Monday May 1, 2023

STILL MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES SECTION # 11

Photo Credit: Chinmayan “The View From My Writing Studio Window On Still Mountain.”

The sun is sinking behind the fog to the west as this day comes to a graceful end.

It is peaceful, quiet and soothing to the soul to see the sea of green grass that surrounds Still Mountain bathed in the golden radiance of the setting sun.

It has been a day of total rest for both of us after two weeks of pushing hard night and day to accomplish goals we set for ourselves.

Most of those days were invested in rebuilding our old Dump Truck’s cargo bay so that we could be ready to make a fresh start in reopening our long-closed Junk Removal and Clean Ups Service.

Because of the heat wave this past week, we were getting up before dawn to work a few hours until the hot sunlight became too much to bear. 

We then retreated to the coolness of our tiny house, which is parked under a large oak tree’s wide spreading branches that shield it from direct sun, to rest and work on this newsletter…before returning to work on the truck during the cooling evenings until well after sunset.

Rebuilding our Dump Truck’s cargo bay turned out to be far more difficult than we imagined when we started.

As I have shared in 2 previous issues (“Dawning Light # 72” 4/13/23 and “Dawning Light # 78” 4/18/23), we had to invest a few days just in cleaning, prepping and treating the old cargo bay deck with wood preservative. 

After recovering from getting unexpectedly sick from the toxic fumes of the preservative, it took us another day to gather all the materials for the rebuild. 

We are going for renewal at every level this Spring, so we chose to invest in all new materials, which turned out to be the wisest choice.

We brought all the new plywood and 2 by 6’s, deck screws, sheet metal screws and other materials back to Still Mountain, neatly stacked in the bed of our Four-by-Four truck.

We backed this up to the cargo bay of the Dump Truck and set up a worktable with a pop-up shade covering over it to make an ideal work area.  It felt like the Dump Truck was in a boatyard for a refit, which took up every possible hour of last week.

Photo Credit: Chinmayan “Laying the Tiger’s Claw”

We first laid down a layer of thick “Tiger’s Claw” roofing felt over the newly preserved old deck to make a watertight seal.

Then we cut the special tongue and groove plywood that is made to be flooring and laid these on top of the “Tiger’s Claw”. 

This was very difficult and frustrating because the old deck isn’t perfectly flat, so it was next to impossible to line up the “tongue” with the “groove” of two sheets and get them to join together.

Photo Credit: Chinmayan “Laying the New Plywood Flooring Deck”

We had this problem with two out of the three sheets we had to lay.   It was so hard to get the first one lined up that after an hour of fruitless labor we were at our wit’s end.

Then, in desperation, I prayed and asked for divine help.  Instantly, I had an inner vision of cutting and laying strips of cardboard down to raise the low spots even with the rest. 

When we did this, the two sheets joined together as if greased and fit perfectly.

We had a similar problem with the third and last sheet.   This time, after 15 minutes of frustration, I prayed again for divine intervention…and they immediately joined up perfectly.

After screwing down the shiny new decking, we started building the new sides and front. 

Photos Credit: Chinmayan and Nicola Smith

The existing sides have always been 32 inches high, and in the vision, I had that inspired us to do the cargo bay rebuilding, I had seen we needed to raise the side another 16 inches to 4 feet high all the way around.

It took us another two days to install new sheets of 4-foot-wide plywood to all three sides and get it all properly screwed off by driving heavy screws into the existing steel frame of the sides. 

The main obstacle was that the quality of sheet metal screws has fallen, so that the Philips’ head slots on about half of them, which is used to insert a steel bit into and drive in with a cordless drill, would be sheared off before driving in very far.

In my experience, every frustrating situation is a golden opportunity to develop patience and learn to look for the better way. 

By the time we got the new sides screwed down, we were already exhausted. It was late on the last day we had set aside for the build, so we kept pushing through, because we had scheduled our first clean-up project for the next day and had to be ready to launch our rebuilt dump truck.

The last step was installing the 2 by 6 outer rim to the top of our new plywood sides.

We were so determined to be ready to launch the next morning that we turned on the yard lights to illuminate our work area and kept on trucking. 

It took us another two hours of working very closely together to set and screw down the rim…but when we were done, we were amazed at how beautiful our new cargo bay looks.  It looks and feels like a new truck!

Photo Credit: Chinmayan “Our Renewed Dump Truck Ready To Launch”

It was well after dark by then.

Ani had already been gathering all the tools for doing our first job, so we went off to rest, feeling well prepared but victorious and happy with our accomplishments.

One of the things I appreciate about Ani is that whatever she does is done to a very high standard, which can only be achieved by breaking the goal into small steps and then focusing on doing each step as well as possible.

We both practice “perseverance furthers” in an intelligent way that means taking breaks and consciously enjoying the process as we move through each step.

The next morning, we took down the work area, and like launching a rebuilt vessel at a boat yard, we launched our rebuilt Dump Truck to go out to our first project.

Of course, that was a grand adventure with its own challenges and unforeseen difficulties, which I will share about in another issue of this newsletter.

The pictures with this story show you the sequence of the work over the past two weeks.

We still have finishing touches, such as building new cargo gates and minor work, but are very happy with the way this project turned out.

Photo Credit: Chinmayan “Our Rebuilt Cargo Bay After Dumping The First Load of Our First Project.”

Original Revelation Poem and Calligraphy By Chinmayan

Image Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Retreat

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