Monday, February 8, 2010

FIRE!!!!!!!!!

Sunday. Day 34. It is like a hangover. The loss and lack of a restful night sleep have taken their toll. The good breakfast at Mel’s helps ease the sting of the loss and the coke for breakfast gives me a little pep to get the day started.

Back home, Jack's football season is over. It started in July and after 7 months, we are done. Whew. I am exhausted. The next few weeks I will be focusing on the Mustang and my training.

Today, I have a goal of fitting and welding in the front floors and repairing the bad welding job on the rear floor. I had ground out the bad weld yesterday and did a much better job welding in the rear floor this time. Good for me. That corrected, I start fitting the fronts, first the left, next the right. I measure twice and cut once. I am getting better, perhaps due to me practicing patience.

I start welding in the harder of the two front floors, the driver side. It is going well I am being methodical. I did weld through one area and I am disappointed, but I know what to do, I will simply patch it.

As I am welding, I see a flame coming from under the car. FLAME! Oh no. FIRE.! I hop out of the car, I am thinking it is the undercoating. Smartly we have fire extinguishers. I yell, “FIRE”, Out of the House!” I do not want anyone in the house if there is an opportunity for this to get out of control. I also know that if I can not get it out, I will push the car out of the garage.

Grabbing the fire extinguisher, I pull the pin and look for the trigger. Where is it? I stop and think what Kim said when she put out the kitchen fire "it has to be easy". I see the trigger. I pull and in seconds the fire is nearly out. I look under the car, it is not the undercoating, rather it was a piece of cardboard soaked in leaky transmission fluid. Dumb. I pull out cardboard from under the car and take it to the driveway. I stomp the rest of the flames out. I had forgotten about the cardboard. A hot piece of welding slag smoldered and caught the cardboard on fire.

I spend the next hour and a half, cleaning up the mess from the extinguisher and wiping everything down. I remove any other items that might possible “catch” from the spattering weld. It was just that small piece of cardboard, but it was enough.

I call it a day after cleaning up the garage. I will not weld again until I have a new fire extinguisher, I will actually buy two news one. The evening is spent making spedies and enjoying a good Super Bowl.

No comments: