Apologies

Network traffic was never super high for this site, sometimes we would get about 30 visitors a day, but it has dropped way down since I stopped posting. Understandably. It is not like there are a ton of layers to these stories that merit re-reading. I had a couple of cases go to trial this week, so I was pretty busy preparing for them. But, the blog is still alive.

I hope I don't screw up the history too much, but my understanding is that prior to the Boy Scouts owning the camp it was an expensive summer getaway property for someone pretty rich. There is an old horse racing track on the property. It is generally overgrown and perpetually very muddy. There is never a valid reason to drive a camp vehicle on the race track. It is forbidden. If you did drive on it, you were likely to get stuck in the mud at some point. Prior to getting stuck, you would have a great time spraying up mud and slipping around. Naturally, we often drove on the race track and we often got stuck.

Camp does not have a fleet of high quality vehicles. There are a couple of nice vehicles, but those are reserved for people far more responsible than me. I was allowed to drive the less beautiful vehicles. For awhile, we got a number of our vehicles from an AFB near Plattsburg NY. They were generally pickup trucks, painted blue (Aim High!) and had reached the end of their useful life for the AF. The end of the useful life for the AF was the beginning of the useful life for us though! Since the AF didn't drive them off road, these vehicles were not equipped with 4wd.

Then there was the "Jimmy". The Jimmy, was a pretty good sized truck. About the same size as a UPS delivery truck, perhaps a bit bigger. It was big enough to have a dualie axel and was a proper truck. Camp had apparently owned this truck since it was new. That was in the 70s. At the point we used it, it was relegated to driving on camp only. There was no way it was street legal. The engine still ran like a top, but everything else was falling apart. Doors would eventually no longer latch, so they were welded shut. The bench seat was replaced with plywood. There was an enormous crack in the windshield that was never going to get fixed. But, it was a blast to drive because it way big, heavy and a stick shift. Plus, you really couldn't break it any more than it already was.

Most of the time when you got a vehicle stuck, the solution was to get another vehicle of similar size to pull it out. This worked fine with the pickup trucks. However, one time while illegally off roading on the racetrack I was in the Jimmy. Eventually, I pushed it too far and got it stuck. The issue was that there was no vehicle that  was big enough to get it unstuck, at least none that I was authorized to drive.  I couldn't tell anyone that was authorized to drive the bigger vehicles because they would frown upon this behavior.  Indeed it was probably why they were authorized to drive the vehicle and I was not.

We did have an extremely well stocked "shop".  This was really just a very large garage with all sorts of tools.  I went down to the shop in one of the little pick up trucks and found a "come along" and a large amount of chain.  A come along is a manual winch.  I thought I would be all set, but even when the Jimmy was in neutral I could not get it to budge with the come along.  So, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan.  On large vehicles, 1st gear is usually geared incredibly low, like top speed in that gear was 5 mph or so.  I put the truck in first, the wheels predictably spun.  But, I could leave it idling and the wheels would still spin and it would not stall out.  So, I hooked up the come along to the truck and then another end to a stout tree (Rudolph would have been able to tell me exactly what kind of tree it was) and began to crank on the come-along.  Amazingly, it worked like a charm, eventually the truck got free and started to roll towards me.  I had to quickly dump the come along and run towards an unoccupied 5 ton truck that was heading straight for me.  It was easy enough to jump in, stop, pick up the tools and return them with no-one being the wiser.  I don't think I ever drove the Jimmy on the race track again.