"Mudder Trucker!"

 At the end of January this year, I made my annual trip to central America to do some volunteer work with Dentistry For All in Guatemala. Once again, my hats off to the organizers of the trip for there is a tremendous amount of administration and logistical work to be done in order for a trip of this magnitude to be successful. Below is a picture of the entire team at what we call the cross over. Basically where week one individuals and week two individuals share the same place at the same time while one team comes in and the second team finishes up. It ends up being 24 hours of a lot of bodies, but the photo gives you an idea of how many people are involved on the front lines.

 In particular I want to point out Cody and Kari, who got engaged on the trip(yay!). Cody is a rancher from the Water valley area north of Cochrane who, as his hobby (like hes not busy enough),builds and races what I can only describe as "mudder" trucks

 May long weekend, a handful of us from the spring DFA trip decided to meet up, go camping, and watch MUDAPALOOZA the qualifying event on his ranch for the weekend.

 And what a weekend it was, some pretty impressive engineering that goes into these beasts.

 And the drivers are constantly pushing the limits to try and win.....

sometimes they push a little too far

 And now the tie in...I of course took Fillmore camping. When I got to the ranch and parked I saw that I had a wee coolant leak from my mid station heater core. Being that I was on my own in the bus for most of the weekend (jeff did join me on the last night) I decided to take apart the core to see where the leak was.

 Try as I might I still wasn't 100% sure if it was coming from a hole in the core or one of the hoses. But it was a slow leak....so I decided to put it in a tub for the ride home. Full pictorial disclosure, I didn't have the where withal to take a picture at the time of the incident. The previous two pictures are after we got home and I had disconnected the hoses. So, where was I??....
monday morning we pack up and it was time to head home. I was first one out of the gates and left the ranch. About 5-10 kms down the road I pull over to wait for Jeff (in his car) and my buddy Brad and his contingent as they are pulling a big trailer. As I wait I get up to make sure everything is in its place. As I turn to the back I see that the tub I used to hold the heater with the slow leak is FRICKEN FULL and slopping over onto the floor! My slow leak turned into Niagara Falls !! I shut everything down, raced to the engine room and shut the cheater core circulation valves off. (Why I didn't do that when I found the leak in the first place is beyond me). Luckily I travel with some extra fluids and we topped up the coolant.

 Also lucky for me, I have a spare heater core sitting in the garage at home(don't ask, its a long story). Being that the other one was submerged in coolant....I'm not sure how well the electric motor will 'dry out'. With a little help from my progeny the new core fits beautifully in the original spot!

 Next project on the docket....Pantry!