Wounds Healing and Scars

We all know that life wounds us. We all want to be healed from these wounds and I think I have found the cure that has been so long hidden just out of sight.

Through a chain of unusual events (which i will relate some other time) as a very young  child I was made aware of the depth and pain that these wounds would cause but even with this head start I was unprepared when life first cut me to my core. That has been years ago and much of the time I carried these wounds not as scars but as festering cuts covered over with so many bandages to pretend that all was well. All of the pain and hurt was still there but just covered over so that the slightest prodding would bring me back to nearly the same condition that I started with.

Recently I was belt another blow, one that should have leveled  me  but trough Gods grace I fund the secrets to being a victor over pain and not just a survivor.

First, know when there is a problem. Fully realize that you have been grievously hurt and things are not "all right". One of the first rules of disaster rescue is to triage the victims. Each person is checked to see if they will be alright given a warm blanket and water or if they need serious medical attention. The man that is near death and says he will be "alright in a few minutes" is not being brave but rather a coward not facing the grave nature of his situation and reaching out for help.  We must triage our wounds are just scratches and with are "$%#*@@=&!!".

Second and maybe an obvious one: know your pain. If you have been hurt, be hurt, it's not ok, and it does not look like it is going to be. There is a terrible strength that comes in suffering that we need to survive and heal and if we numb ourselves we will not have the power to escape the pit into which we have fallen.

Third and most important seek healing fast. We have to want to be healed and not just wait for "time to heal". There can be years of life wasted on waiting and so many missed opportunities waiting for things to get better and they often do not because we add each of these missed chances to the never ending pile of hurt. God has promised us strength to over come these things,  peace in the midst of hardships and heart to be over flowing with His love. To do this He needs our hearts whole and ready and not to be pierced by a thousand hurts. Often in my darken moments i pray for strength to only make it through and for peace and I have never been disaponted in His provistion. 

Fourth Seek Support and fellowship: there are few people that can speak into our lives about the problems that we have right at that time but when we find them we should ask for their words and cherish them greatly. However often even thous who do not know anything about what has happened or even how to help can be of great value and we should seek good fellowship and support even if it does not seem part of the cure

Fifth, wear scars not wounds and move on. Life is to short and beautiful to wast on hurt that is only mean to destroy us and while each wound is forever a  part of who we are we can not let it define us. We must learn from these things and grow wiser and stronger as we run the race that is set before us

300ZX Oil Presser Sensor

A while back the presser switch on my 300ZX gave out and instead of getting a high priced new one i got an generic one. installed it and my dash gauge read between 0 and 30psi (normally 30-60 psi). still trying to get out of buying a new one I popped the old one apart and found that the wires inside where broken. also while I had it apart i took a few pictures that you might find help full.

also i noted that one of the leads was a 6 ohms and the other at 93.2 ohms while no presser was applied. I assume that the one lead would be for an idiot light but there is no connection for this wire on my car (93 Z32), maybe for other model? While at presser the idiot lead had no conductivity and the other lead read 2 ohms.

They probably got pulled/broken last time i replaced it when i was trying to trouble shoot it. It turned out the be that the oil pan was dented up into the oil pick up. Surprisingly the lack of oil did not hurt the bearings. I pulled the pan and checked the bearings myself which was really overkill and unnecessary.

Also I replaced the Bose head unit with an alpine and at first i had the outputs hooked up to the Bose amped speakers. The result was REALLY bad sound, everything was distorted and chopped. I hooked the pre-amp out puts to the to speakers and got better sound. The sound was not as full as it should have been and there was a bad pop every time i turned it on, changed tracks, or changed stations. I tried to hook an capacitor to the amp switch lead hoping the it would buffer the amps but this did not work. I finally added SLC-4 by Scosche and got great sound and no popping.

here is a link for more information.

http://www.twinturbo.net/nissan/300zx/tech/oilsensor/oilsensor.html

also Japan engines have the oil presser sensor in a different location but it can be moved and the old spot plugged.

Poor, dear, Helen

she was the one every man wanted, she was the lady that never knew love.

From the ramparts of troy she looked down on me a simple soul lost in the masses of greeks that churned the ground to blood around me. In that moment the whole field of battle stop as I looked into her eyes and read the terrible story that was written in her perfect eyes.

Many have bosted of Mituses touch that turend all to gold but it was her lips that held a greater power. Her smile could bring a man to his knees and  haunt him for the rest of his life. All that looked upon her smile knew that they must fight to death to protect her and win her. Her kiss was the kiss of the damnedest of the fates for in it was pure joy but left the knowledge that such joy could never be found in any other. It was the kiss of death for many and to the rest it was the kiss of destruction.

Around her the world crumbles, as men fall at her feet and destroy one another and women despise her with loathing, and envy. All her friends are turned against her and against each other. The only love she has ever know is a love that others have drunk from her intoxicating lips.

Now she looks down on the plane and sees the ground is plowed by the war chariots and sown with the blood and sweat of men. It is in this moment that I see her and do not love her. Am I the first to look into the face of
 Medusa and not be turned to stone? There might be other like be but they are swept away in the rabble that tears the world to rags around Helens feet.

I pity her and hope that some day she will find peace and love in the arms of a blind man.

This is my story by young friend. I left that bloody plane and walked my own path for many years. Even though i looked into her eyes for only a moment, I am one of the few that ever knew Helen of Troy.

Tiny Glasses

A long time ago in my first college english class Dr. Bar lectured on surrogate emotions (what he really called it is not fit to print). That lesson has stuck with me through the years and I think it is one of the things that allows us to so easily accept the small roll we have in life with out craving a real purpose in life.

His point was that we often secretly relish other peoples disasters because we can feel the rush of strong emotion without really having lost anything. I think that this applies to more than just tragedy. We have coddled  our self's in the the rush of victory, love, tragedy, heroism, and friendship that is not our own. I would like to say this is just our TV and movies that we use to surrogate emotions (again I am not using the word that really fits) but it is bigger than just that.

Facebook provides us with a thousand peaces of friends that we know only fragments of. It is as if we had one friend that knew all our secrets, fears and loves but this person has been split into a thousand people each holding a fragment of what a real friend would be. While Movies, TV and the internet provide most of this pseudo emotions and relationships we do the same thing in our real lives and this is the worst part.

In the area of romantic relationships most of us would not have an actual "friend with benefits" however most of us have the equivalent on the emotional level. We seek counsel and spend time with "friends" in order to pacify our real logging for companionship. Many of use would never admit to this and would come up with a thousand real legitimate reasons. I wonder if these excuses are all just a front so well constructed that we ourselves do not realize what it covers.

I have recently have taken a very detached view of the news and have been criticized for not caring about things that matter. However my passionate response to most "news" would do little other than making me feel like I had taken a stand on a matter of importance. If a fireman saves a life in New York and i read about and even mentally praise him I feel as if I had actually had a part in the rescue. While I do admire noble deeds and sympathize with others disasters I would rather have the passion to personally help someone or thank someone for a good deed personally than to only empathize.

What is the answer to this problem? Sadly on one of us can solve this problem on our own. If anyone was to cast off all the fragmented relationships, empathy of others pain and heroism and seek to feel and do all these things purely and personally their passion would be so direct that they would be labeled a complete maverick. They would find it hard to interface with the calm content world that we live in. It would be akin to setting a man pulled from the Sahara desert in a room full of tiny glasses of water. Unless we are content to wait and to hope that the world will change we must ask for the strength and grace of God to be the man who is thirsty for the full drought of life rather than the small bits that are safe for us to take.

We Ride!

We ride into the darkness
with word to be spoken that bonds may be broken
may hearts that where bent now be heaven sent
and they ride into the darkness again

Quiet Town

Thanksgiving morning i got up early to get some work done on a shed i was building. While I drove across the town shrouded in fog I had to stop and get a few pictures to share with you.

the shed

my little 300zx

the fog softened every sound and wrapped the whole town in a shifting mysteries

Big Blue A.K.A "The Super Westfalia"

My dad took some road trips with his grandfather when he was a kid and he thought that he should take us on a similar road trip. He looked for a camper for a while and finally got a popup camper. he found that it really hurt the vans gas millage and took a long time to set up and take down.

The problem with this was we drove to a different park every night so we where always setting up the the camper and taking it down all the time and we wasted a lot of time doing this. When we got home he started coming up with a way that we could all travel in the van. the goal of the project was to:
1) fit 7 people comfortably for the trip
2) not change the gas millage very much
3) set up and take down in less than 30 min
4) sleep 7 people at night
5) change back into a "normal" van in less than a week

Here is what we started with this van.

 

This inspiration

then we added a bunch of stuff to it

on the front there when two rails bolted to the bottom of the van that the front rack mounted to. The front rack had a spare tire (mini spare for a van this size, scary) underneath a spot for two water tanks. the front of the rack also folded down into a tow hitch in case the van broke down (another long story). In case we ever need to to for help when the van broke down, we had a old 50cc scooter that also fit in the front rack.

in this next picture you can see the rack with the tanks bike and bug shield removed. just under the van you can see the mini spare warped in a vinyl cover.

on the back we had a the "chuck wagon". it was built on a metal frame and was really heavy and could have been built a lot lighter.

The whole box could be swung away from the van by pulling pin and rolling it back of the trailer jack

once the box was swung away all the inside of it could be accessed. this made the inside much more secure from the pirates of the road... yeah...

The inside of the chuck wagon was quite well equipped with a storage cabinets, a fold down counter, gas range, gas oven and even the kitchen sink. One of the water tanks could beset on top of the box to give running water for washing dishes and things like that.

The back bench was taken out and replaced with a shelf for luggage and a small bench over the wheel well. The spare tire was replaced with the mini spare under the front rack to make room for the ice chest that even has a tube to drain the melted ice water out of the back of the van. under this shelf the parents had their sleeping quarters (the other foam mattress is not shown in this picture)

the front of the van had a few modifications to make it more livable but the only big change was adding a skylight that was the access to the upper level. while the topper was on we had a three panel hatch so we could change the sized of the opening (full open for packing, middle third for more floor in the topper and closed for driving). One of the thing that we had to watch out for is the air pressure opening the hatch up while we drove. we would often put something heavy on it before we closed it to keeping it from opening up.

 The topper was found at a junk yard and was bolted to plywood frame. The plywood frame clamped on the the vans gutters to keep it from flying off. in the from of the topper there where two turn buckles that locked the topper down during travel. when we set up for the night all that had to do was unlock the turnbuckles lift the top (by hand and it was heavy!) and let the prop rods fall into place.

To get the topper off dad put a winch and pulley system in the barn that picked the topper off the van and stored it in the roof of the barn . Sadly wood bees ate the wood that the pulley system was mounted to and so a few years after we put it up it fell  but did not hurt anything.

 As you might have guessed the whole thing was invented built and tested by the only family crazy enough to try it. here are a few pictures of it on the trip.

at night all light up in a camp ground.

breakfast at craters of the moon

Somewhere in Canada! 

belt broke on some lonely stretch of road, fortunately dad has a habit of keeping the old belts under the seat when ever he normally changes the belts so we had an old set that we put on.

Me with the open road in front of me, story of my life.

 Sis waking up after a few hours on the road

this is roughly where the trip took us. There where a lot more stops that are not marked and yes we did drive almost non-stop from Tennessee to Glacier National Park (2k miles just in that leg!)





and when we finally got home the grass had grown and we where ready to stop for a bit (three weeks in a van with seven people will take it out of you).

A great trip that will never be forgotten and in a Van that I have not see anything like