European Car Mechanic Drives a Chevy

I'm sitting in the waiting room at my mechanic. It is first thing in the morning. He specializes in European cars. Every car in the little parking lot out front is a Mercedes, Audi or the like. He pulls up in a beat up Chevy Silverado which I later learn has more than 300,000 miles on it. And it's not just 300,000 miles; it is 300,000 problem free miles. "I think I replaced the radiator on it once." He continues, "Mercedes doesn't make a pickup truck, and even if they did, I doubt it'd get 300,000 problem free miles."

After the brakes get replaced, I've got a couple hours to burn, and then I have to run out to pick up pizza's for K's birthday party. We reserved the neighborhood pavilion as the headcount ballooned. I was braced for the worst, wondering what we'd be charged for the privilege, but it is free to reserve – crazy.

S stayed up late last night working on a turtle cake. She realized that she didn't have all of the ingredients she needed, so off she went to Kroger late at night, with W in tow, who wasn't super pleased with missing his bed time.

A bunch of friends are making the trek up here. It's supposed to rain, but we've got the pavilion, so it won't really matter.

Smelly Les Stroud

We've been watching Survivorman. If you're not familiar with it, it is the non-retarded version of Man vs Wild. When I did multi-week or ~month long mountain climbing trips, my friends would always ask, "but how do you shower on the mountain?" Ha. It goes without saying that Les is quite smelly at the end of his 7-day or 10-day adventures. One big difference is that on my mountain climbing trips, we had sanitary products. We weren't unexpectedly in a survival situation; we had planned, packed and were generally prepared. The whole premise behind Survivorman is that he is specifically and intentionally unprepared. And, unless he's been holding back, that includes not having some supply of wet wipes or toilet paper, etc. In this Papua New Guinea episode, he's talking about spending a night with violet diarrhea. Knowing how awful I smelled after 3 - 4 weeks on a mountain when I had some decent sanitizing products with me, I'm left wondering about his poor rescue crew. They swoop in after a week, load him up in some cramped vehicle (no doubt), and then spend hours or days perhaps returning to civilization? The smell had to be...memorable.