oh! embarrassing!

I did the most stupid, slap-stick, embarrassing move today. And my hand and side are still throbbing from it. I ended up needing to borrow socks from J███████!

How? Well, it started because of the clutch in the truck—the one I just had replaced (grumble, grumble, grumble!) I picked the truck up yesterday and it was nice. I went back to work and finished up the day (and made the previous post.) When I left work however I noticed I needed to press as hard as I could to get the clutch to engage. I did engage, it was just that I had to push the clutch to the floor and then keep pushing like I was trying to push it through the floor. Once it was in gear everything was fine, I just had to push the clutch all the way down before I felt it engage. Ok. So this morning I got in the truck and pressed the clutch, grabbed the shift stick and pushed it out of reverse and to first. I stopped a few inches from first—it was like hitting a brick wall. I had to slam the clutch down ‘with much authority’ to get it to engage. Again on the way to work things where ok, I just had to press the clutch really hard to change gears.

So fist thing when the shop opened I went over and asked them if they could adjust the clutch a little to loosen it up a bit. They said no problem if I could leave the truck for a while. Ok, it’s about a quarter or a mile walk back to the office. It’s a fairly nice walk to, around a office building lined with trees and then across a small storm ditch and your in the parking lot of my offices. Well, soon
after I sat down at my desk it started raining. It rained for a few hours, but at one when I called the shop back and asked if the truck was down it had stopped raining. I decided to head over before it started raining again.

So, across the parking lot, and down the hill to the the drainage ditch—it’s fairly steep, 35 degree slop or so, but only about 10 feet long. The last two feet or so it concrete for the storm ditch. Now when I got to the bottom of the grass part there was about an inch, maybe two inches of water in the ditch (which has a flat bottom about 2 1/2 feet across.) I figure I can step down to the edge of the water then take a big step across and only the heel of my shoe should get wet. I have long legs, no problem. I took one step onto the concrete—and you know what happened then.

I slid down about a foot before my foot flew up (with the other foot) to about head level—or what would have been head level had my head not now been crashing down to about knee level as I landed ever so gracefully on my right side in the water. I managed to keep my face and head from hitting the concrete by catching myself on my right hand—the back of my right hand. My feet and right leg where laying in two inches of water and I had managed to splash enough that my shirt
was 80% drenched—even my hair got wet!

And I still had to walk to the shop to get my truck! Oh! My toes when ‘squish-squish’ with every step! How embarrassing is that? I walked in to pick up the truck soaked from head to toe. Thank god there was an extra shirt in the truck. I sat around in half wet clothes the rest of the day. When I got to mason to hang out with J███████, K– and S██████I had to borrow a pair of socks as my where still soaking wet!

And the clutch is still not right—now it is too loose!