Scrapper

So being that we're still on the four day workweek (four 10's), I had today off. Also seeing as we're still on that schedule, I'm not getting the 10 to 15 hours of overtime that I used to get, and as such money is tighter around here than it was a few months ago. Which is why when Cooter asked me if I wanted to help out on the scrap metal collection project he was undertaking today, after much inner debate, I decided to do it. A little extra money is something I can't turn down.

He borrowed a one ton truck from some friend of the family, with the intention of collecting some scrap metal that a few people we know from work had laying around and bringing it to the recycling plant in Claremont to cash it in for some bucks. Fine. I can help with that ... as long as I don't have to drive the truck. He picked me up here at 7AM (even though he told me 7:30 yesterday, so he ended up waking me up ... and I was a wee bit grouchy), we went to breakfast (he paid), and then set off on our mission.

He already had a pretty good load in there. He's had the truck for a while, I guess, but got lazy and never finished. Our first actual stop was over at Bob's house. There we got some junk he had laying around in his garage, but the main attraction was this old rusted out truck that was down just over the embankment in his backyard. We surveyed the situation, loaded up the garbage from the garage, and then took off for Barney's house. Cooter told him he'd meet him at 9AM, so we had to bail at Bob's and come back later.

The Barney part of the haul was pretty easy. It consisted of some old exercise equipment in his basement. Then it was back to Bob's. The truck was a huge pain in the ass. We had to cut what we took off of the frame (which I guess the two of them think someone will want to buy), and that wasn't easy. In all we destroyed four(4) saw blades on Cooter's smallish electric saw, which amounted to every saw blade we had. After that we still managed to break off a few pieces, and we did get everything disconnected from the frame, but there was still a huge chunk of it we had to leave behind because we couldn't chop it down.

Then it was off to Claremont. I'd never been to this recycling plant, or knew it was there, so that was an experience. There's something vaguely frightening about forty foot high piles of old cars and other scrap metal. All we had to do was dump it off the truck, but we both forgot that we'd thrown a strap over the top of the pile, so some of it came out and the rest was just hanging there in the truck. Instead of feeling stupid, we both decided that was pretty funny. The going rate for the scrap was $215 per ton of scrap, and we had a little over a ton, so some decent money was made. Since Cooter was paying all the overhead, driving, and already had 2/3 of the truck filled when he picked me up, I didn't ask for a 50% share in the profits, but I still made a tidy amount for a few hours work.

Even though the day started out cool, by our second trip up to Bob's it was sunny and *hot*. The temperature only said it was 89 degrees, but by the time we made it to the scrap yard it felt like 109. All I wanted to do when I got home was take a shower and veg out ... and that's all I did. I relaxed and watched seven straight episodes of Heroes on dvd.

And it was great.