Two Years Later - The Resurrection of Yellow Truck

Seattle | Tuesday, January 24 | Helen Street | - I don't even remember what finally did in Yellow Truck. It was probably just the end. Yellow had been a drinker ever since I got him. A lot of oil. Which led to a lot of smoking. He was a drinker and a smoker. He came to me that way. Had a weak heart. Was marooned on the East Coast, on Long Island, being sold by a flipper on ebay. Had spent all his life on the West Coast, outside Portland, Oregon, loving the chill damp and rain. Then was snapped up no doubt for next to nothing, put on a train, and shipped to NY. The guy I bought Yellow from had a bugkilling franchise and was car flipper on the side.

Yellow Truck got us home to Seattle the long way, about 9,000 miles. He made it just about another year beyond that. I put in a new timing belt. Water pump. Glow plugs. The like. His valves started talking, clattering. I kept tuning them. An old guy downtown was helping me tune my ear. I got pretty good with the clearances, getting them just right with the feeler gauges, even at thousandths of an inch, by touch, by measuring the tension in the drag.

But in the end it was Piston No. 3 making the noise, the noise I couldn't quite get to. And then on May 12, or thereabouts, something gave out down by the crankshaft. Compression failed. Nothing would hold. The smoking was unacceptable. Painful to breathe in. Couldn't run him any more without pissing off anyone with the misfortune of getting stuck behind me.

So the wait began. For a window. For the right plan. For the money and the wherewithal.

The truck sat all summer. I fired him up for our September wedding. Then he sat again through fall. November and December, these last two months, he spent parked among giant excavation equipment, at my father-in-law's yard in Tacoma. A plan was hatching.  

This past weekend, we got the truck safely to my brother-in-law's garage. We towed Yellow over in Mr. Merlot, Brendan's burgundy one-ton dualie.Yellow was Mr. Merlot's first cargo. Went beautiful. Super smooth. Smoother than with no load, the power band synching perfect with the gears.

So I've begun digging down to the motor. Photographing the parts as they come out. Maybe this weekend I'll finally be ready to haul out the motor and trannie, ready them for the trip to Kent for rebuilding.

Yellow Truck is coming back. Oh, how he'll purr and burble now. The 2.2 liter diesel. Parts coming from Australia, where they still love these little diesels. Cannot wait. The Champion of the Slow Lane, the unquenchable mesmerizer. Back on the streets, burning the recycled canola oil. I hope. I pray.

More soon.

San Francisco balcony and stair, fotos and text

SEATTLE, WA  |  E. Helen St. | Thursday, June 10, 2010 - So here finally are fotos from the San Francisco project. Hopefully you remember images of the old stair configuration. An earlier SF post has one for sure. I'll add a couple more later. For now, here is the new.

The plum tree (foreground) defined the project in a lot of ways. The deck's prow comes within inches of the plum's trunk, and the deck partially enters the tree canopy before turning to flank the upstairs kitchen and access the stair. We reconfigured the drainpipe to empty into the tree above head-height, so that rainwater will cascade down the tree, soaking the bark, before entering the ground.   






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If you were standing on Sistah Margaret's garden patio, off of her living room, and were to look up, this is more or less what you would see. Note the drainpipe, reaching just beyond the deck "prow", where it will empty into the tree.




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This view shows the mitered corner of the deck - the prow - from above, looking down thru the rail. The silver of the drainpipe spout is just visible below the deck. Margaret calls the prow a beak. So it's also a beak.


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A similar view, looking up this time. Idea being that all goes to the plum tree (above). The mitered decking all moves to the tree. The structure of the deck cantilevers to the tree. The drainpipe ferries rain to the tree, watering it.  






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The mitered decking, connecting the tree and the house.




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Screw pattern showing convergence of structure (joists) below. The drainpipe runs right below, between the main parings of screws.




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The drainpipe is suspended from a threaded rod. The rod is anchored in blocking screwed between the joists.

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Some poetic wonderfulness. Silouette of drainspout above tiny beginnings of a new branch on the plum tree. Cabling and stair rails in background.



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The stairs themselves. The stairs are super light, super transparent, with no risers. Redwood treads and uprights and cedar rail. You can strum the cables, tuned to about a g-minor. The stairs also function, as the foto shows, as a sundial. Straight vertical light slots would be solar noon. And the stair faces west. So this foto would have been taken at approximately 2 pm, give or take. The upstairs neighbor Matthew will use these stairs to get to the garden.


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 One of the two rail ends. The edges are chamfered so they're relatively soft to hands. The garden side rail ends sooner, the one shown here, three treads higher, so that as you come down the stairs, the stair opens sooner on one side, leading you into the garden.






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 Detail of the rail end. The metal buttons are the anchors for the cable. More often you would see a 4x4 post here. We built custom uprights from 2x2s and 2x4s, gluing and screwing them in a t-section that has the same or more structural heft as a 4x4, and is more lightweight, more minimal.


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This detail of the uprights shows another plus of the t-section. The 2x4s of the rail frame slide right in and get good anchorage. The decking is notched to make way for the 2x4 portion of the upright. The 2x2 sits just above the decking.



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This is the juncture of deck and stair. On the left, the runs of deck cable end in nuts and washers. To the right, the deck toggle turnbuckles of the stair cable begin. 




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The north side of the deck, with the next-door neighbor's Japanese maple. The turnbuckles for the cable - the silver casings to the right - have all been painstakingly lined up and cranked tight.






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The view as you come out of the upstairs neighbor's kitchen and look to the right (west), into the upper story of the plum tree. Later this summer you'll be able to stand there and eat fruit right from the tree with no hands.



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The most important view of all, Sistah Margaret's. Here, from her living room. The view out her kitchen window has also been opened up. Before she looked at the underside of a closed stair while doing dishes at the sink. Now, with the stairs moved north, and landing slightly deeper in the garden, she looks into garden when she's at the sink. Chi flowing again.

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nearly done, the slog north from San Francisco

SEATTLE, WA | MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2010 | E. Helen St., Apt. A - We are home. After 88 days, 8703 miles. 

People have traveled around the globe in less time. Or they have spent a lifetime - more time - in one town, never straying. Either way, we were on the road, away from home, for three months. 


We had planned on about a month. We were interrupted. Delayed. Transubstantiation.

From San Francisco, we had about 900 miles to go. Yellow Truck was repacked, only now with another 200-odd pounds - telescoping ladder, chop saw, wood scraps for birdhouses. His suspension was sodden with all the weight. The tires could have used some air, which they didn't get until much later. The back bumper scraped the sidewalk as we pulled out of Sistah Margaret's driveway. 


The transmission was also rough. Reverse gear was pretty much gone. There'd been a couple different times already, Adrienne had to get out, push. We had backed Yellow into the drive like a drag car - they don't have reverse either. 

First and second gears were mostly not cooperating. On errands, I'd adapted to getting Yellow going in third gear. It was essentially a long slow release of the clutch. But freighted with gear, it wasn't going to work. Too much weight for him to get going in third without crapping out. 


So the last 900 miles were looking awful as we pulled out of the drive. It was 11 am. Sunny. Hot. The suspension was drunk. I couldn't find the gears without wrestling, trying and retrying after the lights would turn green, keeping people waiting, waving out the window, waving them past. It was stressful, you could say. We realized we were hungry. We made it to Mission St. I pulled to a stop in the right lane, dropped Adrienne across from El Farolito, wrestled Yellow back into gear as traffic approached in the rear view mirror. 

She went for the burritos. I would circle meantime. Without reverse, I wouldn't likely be parking, not parallel parking anyway. I needed to be able to coast in and coast out. I found Bartlett, a small side street. Coasted into a spot not quite big enough for a car, but with apartment driveways on either side. I decided I'd call Adrienne, coordinate the pickup. Her phone started ringing next to me, left in her bag. Ah well. I got out the roadmap. I would consider things, given the performance of the truck in the first few blocks. I'd barely found San Francisco on the map when an old man in a dress shirt, belt and synthetic pants came out of one of the apartments and hobbled down the stairs. He held up his hands for me to see. "You don't fit. There's not enough room for you."

I said "Sir, don't bother me. I'll be here five minutes. I'm not getting out. I'm just stopped for a second."

The old man pursed his lips. "I have to leave in a half-hour."

"Okay. That's fine. I'll be gone."

I went back to the map, staring in my lap, enraged, waiting for him to go back inside. He went back up the stairs, one foot up, then the other to the same step. Then the next stair, same one-two rhythm, pulling himself with one arm on the rail.  


In another minute he reappeared in a satin baseball jacket and hat. 


He was determined, obviously, to see me leave. Yellow fired up, the idle didn't catch, sputtered and died. That had never happened. I waited and fired again and the idle caught and I pulled out, turned onto 24th and came back to Mission. Amazingly, Adrienne was already back on the street, standing by a streetlight, the burritos in a bag under her arm. In all the traffic she didn't hear the horn. But eventually she saw me. I pulled over in a nebulous zone between parking and crosswalk. I was already getting good at finding these places. She ran across 24th and hopped in. We made it to a church on Cesar Chavez, parked in a loading only zone, sat, unlooking at anything, unpeeled our burritos. 

101 North ended up taking us all through the downtown. I'd forgotten what a nasty stretch of road it was. Must have been 40 lights at least. Before long I was putting the hazards on, eking into gear, then stopping again for the next red light. We finally made it over the Golden Gate, all shrouded in fog.

The coastal route no longer seemed like a very good idea. The first half-hour had stripped us, left us raw, not knowing enough to laugh, to just laugh and laugh and laugh.

Adrienne suggested maybe we go back to the house, call a mechanic. Looking back, it seems sensible, maybe even obvious. In most situations that would be the thing to do. 


We kept going. We went the 101. It got beautiful. Wine country. Hills and vines. Like Tuscany, Adrienne said. 

Then we tried cutting along a back road, Rt. 185, to the sea. To catch just 40 miles of the coast highway. A compromise. A concession to beauty. But the road coiled up, got all curvy and hilly. We came around a hairpin that reared up into a short steep hill, needed to shift down into second gear, and that was all she wrote. Couldn't find second, wouldn't go into gear. We slowed to a stop. I started braking, backing, letting gravity take us back down the hill until we came to a stop where we could turn around. A truck was coming the other way, also down the hill, so I stopped, not sure why, to let him go by. Then we kept backing down, rolling in neutral, around the hairpin backwards, back down into the valley, and rolled into a driveway, managed to get turned around and headed back to the 101.


Before the 101, we stopped at an onramp. We looked at the map. It was crazy. We couldn't do hills. We couldn't do lights. We couldn't start, stop or park. The only thing we had left was third, fourth and sometimes fifth gear - we had only driving, only the going, only the -in-the-midst-of-things gear. Poetically anyway, it made sense. Just the sustained-ed-ness of it all. We had found that zone of timelessness, the still moving zone of everything-held-at-bay. But every other way, the transmission's state of disrepair was impractical to say the least. Hard to get anywhere. And we still had a good 840 miles to go.

At some point, oh, how I wish it had been earlier, I discovered that if I jammed the shifter all the way to the right, in the central neutral zone, and then brought it back to the left, I could clear out the gears - realign their teeth, something - and ninety percent of the time, shift into first gear. Then the same thing to get into second - out of first, all the way to the right in neutral, then back and down into second. And then direct into the last three gears. Still no reverse. But anyway, being able to drive again in traffic, at least to get home. But I didn't figure this out until late in the day, not until the next morning, in the last miles as we approached Tacoma. And maybe the gears hadn't settled into this new order before then.


Eureka, Calif., for example. We counted the stoplights, how many we made green, so that we didn't have to stop. There were 19 stoplights in all. We made 15 of them green. I felt blessed by that. Only four to wrestle into gear, holding up our lane.

We saw some coast. Very beautiful. We went inland, over the mountains, on Rt. 199. Did I mention? It had been raining all this time, since shortly after entering wine country. I'd forgotten about the rain. And we went through the night fog of the redwood forests. We crossed two slide areas, where rocks had spewed across the road, good-sized rocks in one place, barely got thru, Adrienne called 911 to let them know, Mile 597 I think it was. Big sharp fresh rocks, tear out an oil pan. The car behind us didn't risk it. We kept going, navigated through. We couldn't stop at this point. Not even when in Willits, Calif., we saw a mural of old cars at an auto parts store, and the central image was a white shifter. Like a warning. Or maybe auspicious. So bizarre at all. We kept going.

We slept for three hours in a rest stop, curled against each other in the front seat. We parked between semi tractor-trailers. Their generators blaring. We woke up, kept going, still in the rain, rain getting in and dripping on Adrienne's feet.

As we came into Oregon, where Yellow Truck is from, he came alive, truly, which makes some sense. His tuning for nearly 30 years was for this climate. We were back up to 62 mph, driving strong, the aftermarket mist setting on the windshield wipers just right for the slow gauze of rain coming down.

We made Portland, Oregon, around 7:15 am, just beating out the Friday morning rush hour traffic. It was just building up. We slipped through, saw the slog coming from the north, already a parking lot.

We kept going. When Adrienne's Mum called, we asked her which route would have the least stoplights. How to slip into town. And as we came along the route she told us, it must have been here, during this stretch, at one of the intersections, I figured out the shifting trick. And we made it to Adrienne's parents' house, choosing the last approach to leave us coasting uphill past the driveway, so we could let the gravity of the hill roll us backwards through the gates, down the driveway. Her mum was there. Adrienne got out. Came around. They hugged.




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denouement

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. | Wednesday, June 2, 2010 | Hampshire St. -

Finally we are done with the stair.

We finished in the afternoon.


The last things. Priming and painting the drainpipe, the kneebracing by the kitchen door. Trimming the plum tree.


The upstairs neighbors, two of them anyway, two young women, burst open the door that had been barred shut for months, since long before we'd arrived. They stepped out onto the deck in shorts and bare feet. Already one was talking on the phone, inviting someone over for dinner. "We have an awesome new deck," she was saying.

Word was already spreading.



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Notes from a garden party

SAN FRANCISCO, SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2010 - Roman P came to the party, old Seattle friend, like a spring-loaded cafeteria plate, first one in, last of the stack to go. 

Jesse wore Prada sunglasses. Made margaritas in a jug. He remembered how the old stair obscured the kitchen window, was the first to tell Adrienne and I how good the new stair is. He knew the old way. So he saw more than a deck in the new way.


Sean and Jen Grasso came with tequila, with children hanging from their arms. Sean was comfortable, well-lived, standing there, smiling at things elsewhere, in the way his hair flowed back from his brow. Jen was stately. The garden became an advertisement around her, with Calder trying to pull her down, her long thin arms to the ground.

Others came too, gathered in the back garden. Eating and drinking, talking in twos, in threes and fours. The children ran past, squealing, wanting to be caught, picked up upside-down and shook. 

Others stayed home, or were absent without explanation. Daniel Kotzin, for example, stayed in the sunny East Bay, babysitting his two nieces and nephew while his sister chaperoned a prom. Probably the kids and Daniel were dancing ring-around-the-rosie as I stuffed hardwood into the chiminera, getting the ashes stirred up, the fire going, cutting mangos, flipping fresh corn tortillas on the grill.

Roman and I were gabbin. The thing I fear most, I said, is a fire I started going out. It was a confession. Because I was only half-listening, this was early on, watching the fire past him, had just got it going, it still wasn't for sure, the wood was heavy and dense, smoking, the flames just licking. He was laughing. The fear of a fire going out. He remembered a house in the Central District, Seattle, he'd lived there, cut up a Christmas tree with roommates, burned it in the fireplace. They went outside, it was so raging, to see. And the embers were floating from the chimney into the night. So, right, the other fear, that the fire will spread. 

It was a long good party. Adrienne and Sistah Margaret and I shopped a fair part of the day for it, assembling it, getting the taco ingredients, the crack meat from La Gallinita, the fresh crumbled cheese from Don Francisco's Quesos Frescos, hydrangeas from the market, peonies at Trader Joe's, other stops, other markets. 

Two grills going. Jugs of margaritas. Sistah Margaret in new Boden jacket, feting Josh for his birthday, and Adrienne and I for the partially-completed stair. Bryce, old dear friend of Margaret, Bryce, unreeling hilarity by the minute, tricking things up, with Suzanne, Suzanne with ipad, with black scarf, black coat, narrating extemporaneously. Going until late, but not even that late, maybe 11 o'clock. But late enough, beginning from early evening, that in the end there was just six of us, sitting inside, in the living room, it'd gotten cold again, listening to Bert and I, on the laptop, repeating the funny sounds and odd words of a master bumpkin storyteller, holding up to the light that old phrase, of being in a place so local, so remote, so self-contained, that a stranger come through asking directions, well, now he's stuck, you know, come to think of it, You can't get they'ah from here.
 

Construction update fotos

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. | Saturday, May 22, 2010 - Construction of the stair progresses. Some days we never leave the back garden. We're out back working when Margaret leaves for the credit union. We are still there when she returns. 

We must have eaten a million El Farolito burritos by now. Often we leave for lunch. We get hungry. It's a long narrow place with booths, dark toward the back. But the mariachi music starts up on the jukebox. Blast of carnival, merry.

They have the saying about a person being able to survive all day on one date or fig. Same goes, easily, for an El Farolito burrito.

So here are some construction update pics. And a note on an earlier, controversial pic that showed the awesome diagonal patterning of the lag bolts on the ledger boards: the lag bolts are five inches long, and suck through the new 2x12s into existing double stacked 2x10 dimensional beams (actually two inches thick rather than the nominal's one-and-a-half inch thickness). Super rugged. Could barely crank the bolts home.

Yellow Truck, meanwhile, has developed a crotchety transmission. He doesn't like reverse, first gear or second gear. Amazingly, I can get him going in third when required. But won't last. I've topped off the gear oil and tried a couple other things, but haven't solved yet. Poor Yellow Truck. Sore and stiff now that the adrenalin has subsided. 

Rope like steel: Getting the last bit of the balcony's structural frame square to itself and to the brick path. Here we've cranked the ridge beam tight to the house with old lobster rope tricks, so we can hammer against it, fasten in the last couple joists. Maybe excessive, but the deck stayed square, it worked like a charm.






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Here comes the first stringer! A jumbled photo, but there it is, that beautiful thing, looking west, catching the afternoon sun. Each stringer is 14 steps, about 64 freehand cuts with the circular saw. Then those have to match up with the next 128 cuts for the next two stringers. No way around it. Anything worth doing takes a little time. 






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Here's the corner detail for the balcony. It's also the cantilever. Note the lack of a post at the corner there by the plum tree. So the two diagonal joists are transferring loads (i.e. the weight of people) from the far corner back to the ledger beam then down the posts. The diagonal joists are also going to serve as our nailers for the decking, so there had to be two, and they had to be as tight as possible, to nail within a few inches of the decking board ends. The smaller joists treeing off the diagonal joists preserve the overall joist spacing of two feet on center.



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Three stringers aloft. I love them best like this, when they're abstract. No treads, no risers. Just the right angles going up.




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Another shot of the trifecta.





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Margaret tests out one of the temporary treads.







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Adrienne, as decking goes in, white siding, green leaves, blue sky










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Here's the view from below, with the decking in, at the mitered corner, leading to stair. Took forever, doing miter vs. straight cuts. But it's the best moment, design-wise so far, and totally completes the gesture of the cantilever. Decking is redwood 2x6s with 1/4 spacing (thickness of two paint stirrers duct-taped together).



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 Stringers with treads.










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A jig, or maybe just a stop, to cut the uprights for the rail all to the same length. The tiny roof-shaped wood scrap ended up being perfect to get the wood level with the chop saw platform. 





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The uprights. With bottoms trimmed at a 45 degree angle. They'll carry the cabling. We glued and screwed 2x2s to these 2x4 uprights, to beef them up, but keep them more elegant than 4x4s. We already have four of these up. Fotos to come. Looking good. We're closing in on the cabling. Any day now. But first, a garden party. Ten minutes until 5. Must start juicing limes, get the fires going.




Hope all good. 
The weekend.
Sunny.
Buoy bell chime in the breeze.






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fotos here in San Francisco, bonus text

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - We've been here for a couple weeks now. Three weeks really. Week one: designing. Weeks two and three: construction. We seem to go very slow. You know, talk everything through.

So some highlights, including Mother's Day visit from my Mum. We flew her out. She arrived, demanded that we let her pay us back. We love her. Eventually we gave in. Said yes. Took her out to dinner. Da Flora, in North Beach. Venetian place. Amazing. 

Our host in San Francisco, Sister Margaret. Note the hands clasped in an urban prayer: Light, Turn green, for me. 




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The beautiful Ramp restaurant. Bloody Marys as appetizers, fried fish for brunch. Into late afternoon soaking up industrial balm.








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The famous Zinnia, daughter of Angie, at the Ramp.




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Yellow Truck at Beronio Lumber, off Cesar Chavez, with several 16-foot 2x12s for the stringers strapped to the roof. I like adding "-onio" to any old word, so this lumber yard was perfect. People on Yelp don't like it however. Many have been embarrassed by the lack of coddling found here. I will have to add my two cents at some point. Note the watch house on the right. A friendly employee checks the contents of your vehicle against your sales slip as you leave. Nice touch.



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Yellow Truck in his SF parking spot, on Hampshire St. In three weeks here, doing errands and all that, going over to East Bay once, still have over half a tank. These are the salad days for Yellow Truck, post-long haul. Rarely out of third gear.




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Some of the impressive lag bolts for fastening the balcony to the house. The balcony then leads to the stair. 




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My mum has arrived from Maine for Mother's Day, with photos from when she and my dad first were married, back in 1961, living in Italy. He was doing his military time, as a young doctor. She came with. They were in Brindisi. Also on the table, articles from the Portland Press Herald, news from home, brought by mum, architectural for me, beach news and socialism for Margaret.



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Adrienne and Margaret getting Frittata No. 2 underway. I made coffee and am helping too. Mum is somewhere off camera.






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The four inhabitants eating toast. Mum's eyes closed, savoring our excellent company.





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Ocean Beach.






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Cliff House, Mother's Day. Sister Margaret is conjuring. Mum is also conjuring. Deep focus required. And results! Gray whales within five minutes. They were headed north, spouting from their blowholes, oily black beasts half-emerging from the sea, just beyond the rocks. Everyone rushed from their tables to the windows. No urbanity. A lot of shouting. Everyone thrilled.



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Sister Margaret is irresistible, and pleased with the feral whale count. 








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Just north of Cliff House, Sutro Baths, what is left of them. People used to take a nickel train from the downtown out here to the sea, to a carnivalesque beachside encampment. Sutro Baths was all cast-iron and glass, like a conservatory, echos and leisure, cold ocean water channeled through, people swimming, diving, standing and watching.



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Adrienne liked this one, so I put it in. Something funny and good about it.







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My dear Mum, Phyllis, looking out to sea.




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Ledger board, posts and joists. Plum tree in foreground. Stair to come.






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Triangulating toward square. Yellow tapes to get posts and stair square to brick path. Juxtaposed against the easy curve of the extension cord. Cord, by the way, is the hefty 10-gauge, hard to find, good for the tools. Super duty, like Yellow Truck.




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this is a surrogate foto. the light on the sign "House of Brakes" was amazing one early evening, around 7:30 pm. This one, however, was taken at about 7:45 pm, several days later, and the beauty light had departed. But anyway, I love the name, House of Brakes. There are Houses of Pancakes, Houses of Ill Repute. But House of Brakes? It seemed ominous, or to promise profundity, and instead maybe it is delivering a slightly humorous confusion. Anyway, this foto is a placeholder. Wait until I get another take, my big break. It will be amazing.


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Looking south from intersection of 24th and Folsom, outer Mission. I love the green hills of San Francisco. More than the green hills of the California country side. I always have. They are so far away, so peaceful, always awaiting you, if you could ever leave city life for a minute, on a weekend afternoon. They are not here by happenstance. Some urban plan has left them, allowed them. Adrienne has listened patiently to my rants about them. She summed it up perfectly after mulling it a day or two: prospect and refuge.  That's what they are. Prospect and Refuge.




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Night cycles. 24th Street again. This time just after sundown. Outside Pop's. Nighthawks at the diner. Edward Hopper. Only the mood is movement, imminence, rather than paralysis.






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soon to come, an installment on the toyotas of San Francisco County. 




hope all good.


soon we home to Seattle 
soon soon
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