Ever Wanted To Drive A Dozer??

Friday, March 12, 2010

Is there something in your life that you've always wanted to do but never had the courage to do?  Maybe its something like skydiving or learning to fly a plane or maybe learning to rock a fireplace.  Well, I've always wanted to drive a bulldozer.

Living at the lake has given me certain "opportunities" to accomplish this lifelong dream of mine.  Opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had living in the city.  Like the time they were dredging our neighbors boathouse and left the backhoe on the floating barge for several nights.  Those workers obviously had no idea how enticing their backhoe was to the 46 year old lady next door (ME....I was younger back then) cause once the workers left for the day, I would go hop on the backhoe and proceed to move the dirt from the lake to the seawall, back to the lake, back to the seawall, then back to the lake.....well, you get the point.  I was in backhoe-Heaven!

But then there was the time the same neighbors had a HUGE dozer parked in their driveway for a few days.  I can't remember "why" they had a dozer in their driveway, but they did and it kept calling my name......"Lizzzzz......Take Me For A Ride.......Hop On.....it'll be fun....you're a professional dozer driver..."  After about 3 days, I could stand it no longer.  I decided I would just "start it up" to see how it sounded.  I climbed up in the seat, discovered they hadn't left a key (DANG) so started fiddling with knobs, controls, clutches and suddenly, this massive "piece of work" diesel came alive.  WHOAAAAA........we were now heading towards the best day of my life!  After inhaling the aromatic fumes of the diesel engine, and hearing the purrrrrrr of this fantastic puppy, I decided, "Why not just move it up and down the driveway a few times.......what could that hurt??"
(and yes, that's me in the yellow top explaining to my neighbor how I turned it on...)

So that's what I did.....forward a few feet; backward a few feet......I was tingling with happiness.  About this time,  I could see Charlie coming out of our house (more than likely due to the ground vibration from the massive diesel engine) who insisted I turn it off so I could hear him yelling at me.  But "how" did I turn it on in the first place??  I had just pushed and pulled some buttons and knobs and really didn't know what I did to turn it on......

Unfortunately, nothing I did could get this massive piece of work to turn off.  Charlie tried to turn it off.....NOPE.  The other neighbor came over and tried to turn it off.....NOPE.    Liz tried again......NOPE.  We called a friend who knows something about dozers....NOPE, NOPE, NOPE.  Charlie then tried to cut the fuel line......NOPE........it just kept purring......  We then went online to the Caterpillar website to pull up the schematics of that model.....NOPE....still running.  It finally ran out of gas about 10:00 that night, thank goodness, cause none of us were getting any sleep until it did.

Hummmm........I'm not real sure why I'm telling you this story.........