Behold the Truckie

Apparently this is the effect I have on machinery. This is the yoke from the output shaft on the transmission of Ambo 2.

I am the Truckie, destroyer of Zetron and conqueror of calipers. Powerstrokes bleed in my presence.

It turns out I’m a destructive force here in Antarctica. After my ability to supposedly magically break Ambo 2 and Red 1 a few weeks ago, my list of victims has grown considerably. It has grown so much that Cap has banned me from going anywhere near the Oden, the Swedish ice breaker that finally docked at the ice pier several days ago, lest I cause it to sink or bring some other form of mechanical malady upon it.

Working out at the Crash Shack the other day, my ability to magically make things break came out into full force. During my time there, Ambo 2 failed to start on several occasions requiring jumpstarts, Red 4 decided to have indigestion and spill glycol, and Red 1 determined that stopping via use of the brakes was no longer necessary for a 70,000 pound tracked dinosaur.

The most entertaining of these, in my opinion, was Red 1 not wanting to stop. If you get bored by technical details, feel free to skip down a few paragraphs.

Following a hardstand for the C-17 from Cheech Red 1 needed fuel. Since we don’t normally move the Chieftains from their parking spots as they destroy the ice roads it was the first time it had been in motion for the day. As I shifted through the gears, I kept hearing a loud clunking that I couldn’t recall being there before. As I hadn’t driven it in a while, however, I couldn’t remember if this was normal as the Chieftains make lots of strange noises.

Pulling up to the fuel tank, I lined it up and downshifted to get ready to stop. After having dropped to first gear and then into neutral, I hit the brakes. Normally, this is where the Chieftain would come to a stop. Instead, it decided to roll a few more feet on its own and then stop. This came as a bit of a surprise, though it wasn’t a huge issue as the drag from the tracks and the level ice allowed it to come to a stop on its own.

Puzzled, and now wondering what the smell of burning brakes was coming from, I hopped out and dove under the front of the unit. Crawling behind the front pumpkin, I came to the disc brake that is located on the front drive shaft. Upon closer examination, I found that the front caliper bracket was loose (the cause of the clunking) and the vibrating action had loosened the fittings for the hydraulic brake causing it to dump fluid everywhere. Upon further inspection, I also found that the air brake used for parking was not engaged (I set it before leaving the cab) and that the pads had been loosely rubbing against the disc, causing the burning smell. Looking at the rear parking brake, I found the same situation.

After radioing in and letting Lt. Helitack know, I went to work trying to clean up and patch it. Absorbent pads took care of the spill and a wrench solved the leak.

Shortly after, Lt. Helitack and the rest of the crew came out to stare and provide their opinions.

After nursing Red 1 back to her parking spot, I was a little disappointed (though not wholly surprised) to find that the brake line had come loose and was leaking again.

A little while later, the phone rang in the Crash Shack. It was the Cap. He spoke with Lt. Helitack for a few minutes regarding the mechanical problems and then requested to speak with me.

Picking up the phone, I said, “Grant.”

He responded with “I send you all the way out to Pegasus, put you in the biggest fire truck we have, and you go and break it in half?!”

Before I could respond, I could hear the phone slam down on the other end. He had hung up.

It was worth a laugh. While likely at first appearance to you as an uninvolved reader it doesn’t sound like a good thing, it goes back to myself and the Captain having a unique relationship where we give each other a hard time constantly. It’s fun. He called back a few minutes later to laugh at me and then ask some more questions about the problem.

If you were skipping over the broken Red 1 story, please resume here. If you don’t want to hear about me breaking the Zetron radio console and the T-Site, please get off at the next exit.

For the next shift, I was assigned back in town at Station 1. As one of our dispatchers is on R&R before the winter sets in, we are currently short of personnel in the world of dispatch. As a result, lowly firefighters such as myself are required to fill in at dispatch.

This always creates some amusing situations since most of us haven’t really done much dispatching. This combined with the fact that very few real situations actually arise on station leads to various forms of chaos arising when something actually does happen.

Nearing the end of our shift, I had the pleasure of waking up a little early and stumbling in a half conscious manner down into the dispatch office to relieve Jersey, the overnight dispatcher. After the normal pass down, I assumed “control” of dispatch.

It was a quiet morning, with only a few phone calls from people looking for numbers. I sat in the office and watched through the windows as the rest of the crew swept the bays and did the rest of the morning chores.

After a little while, someone stopped in and told me that Scat 1 was trying to raise me on the radio for the morning radio check.

“Huh,” I thought. “How’d I miss that? I had channel two turned up.”

So I tried to raise Scat on the radio.

Silence.

“Weird,” I thought. I went and told someone to get Clint Eastwood to go back out and try it again, assuming that he’d already come back in. He went and tried, and nothing.

By this time, officers were now wandering into the office telling me that Scat was calling. At this point, after hearing nothing, I advised them that channel two didn’t seem to be working. A few quick checks with a portable radio confirmed this, and my status as the killer of the Zetron was confirmed.

Few were surprised when they found out I was in there when it decided to fail.

After a few phone calls and paging in the head dispatcher, chaos continued, albeit without me as I went off shift and went home for a safety nap.

Later, I discovered that I hadn’t destroyed the Zetron console, but in fact I had magically managed to destroy the transmitter at the T-Site. An enviable distinction, indeed.

Though the true cause of the fried transmitter was an unscheduled power outage during the previous night, I will certainly be remembered as the one who broke it.

Lastly, for any that doubt my amazing ability to create havoc and devastation just by being in the same geographic location as something, I give one final example.

Yesterday, an off day, the page came out looking for volunteers to help unload pallets of beer for the store.

Within minutes, off-duty firefighters appeared out of every nook and cranny to help, including myself.

The reason for the mass desire to help is simple: the store typically gives the volunteers free beer that would not normally be sold as perhaps one can of the six pack was damaged.

The beer offload proceeded as normal for the entire first pallet, with firefighters creating human conveyors moving beer from pallet to carts. The second pallet, loaded with Heineken, did not operate as smoothly.

While myself and a few others were inside offloading cases of beer and soda into stacks in the store, the rest of the group were out on the loading dock starting into the Heineken. The beer was wrapped up in layers of plastic rolled around the sides of the pallet, something that you’ve undoubtedly seen in various warehouse club stores such as Costco or Sam’s Club. Acting Lieutenant was cutting through the plastic in an effort to get to the beer.

As he did so, he came down to a layer that was held on by only a little bit of plastic.

He cut the plastic.

Now, what happened next I have pieced together from eyewitness statements.

Apparently, when Acting Lieutenant severed the last strip of plastic, the angle of the sun, gravity, and assorted laws of physics all came together and conspired to do the unthinkable.

With the last shred of saran wrap divided beneath the blade, the beers shifted under these new forces put on them. They shifted back, further back, and then down. It was a dreadful plummet. Horror ensued. I’m sure the terrified faces of those involved will never be equaled again. Case after case cascaded down out of control to the packed volcanic sands below. A sea of green cans and cardboard spilled everywhere. Hissing and spitting came from some of the cans. A few valiant volunteers dove in to save those wounded, doing their best to shotgun the ruptured cans, saving the liquid gold inside from a miserable fate in the sands of Ross Island.

When I stepped out, I was left aghast at the devastation.

I took pictures.

After cleaning up the mess (and having myself blamed for the disaster due to my destructive skills as a truckie even though I was a hundred feet away), we were each rewarded with a six pack of unfit for sale Heineken.

It’s a harsh continent. Sometimes bad things end up being good, though.

This now concludes the tales of destruction that have occurred in the last few days. I’m sure other things of interest have happened, though I can’t recall them. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is no sense of time here. It is five days until cookie day. That’s all I know.