PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

Mom is the hard part...

She didn’t like it when my dad had a motorcycle!

 

Here’s a good story; February 2003...

Anybody who lived in the Northeast at the time will remember this blizzard!

My Grandparents stopped by for Christmas in 2002 while driving from their summer home in Maine to their winter home in Florida. We lived in Northern Virginia at the time, so we were literally at the halfway point.

What nobody counted on was my 78-year old Grandpa (technically my step-grandpa, who my cousins and I have always called Mr. P) getting very sick due to his heart condition. This resulted in my Grandparents staying more than three months beyond their intended visit, colonizing our finished basement, and kicking me out of my designated video game area in the process. By the end of January, I was sick of Grammy!

 

By the time the blizzard of the century hit, my grandparents had been staying with us for over a month. In February, a bunch of my relatives from my mom’s side of the family came over for a visit, including my aunt, uncle, and two cousins from California, and my other aunt who was living in Zimbabwe at the time. We lived in Centreville, Virginia; One of my mom’s older sisters and her husband lived about 20 miles away (30 minutes by car under ideal conditions) in Vienna. Both my parents, and my aunt and uncle, had 5-bedroom homes with finished basements; If I had to guess, our house was chosen probably because:

• It was eight years newer.
• It had higher ceiling and seemed bigger.
• It had gas heat while aunt and uncle’s house had a heat pump.
• Most importantly, because my sick grandpa was there and in no condition to go anywhere but the doctor’s office.

So, our house was chosen for the family reunion and I was summarily kicked out of my bedroom for the second time in just over a month.

 

The first time I’d been kicked out of my own bedroom that winter so a relative could use it had been Christmas 2002...

Our house in Centreville had four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a half bath. When calculating square footage and number of bedrooms/bathrooms for a real estate listing, basement space is generally not included. However, our house had a fifth bedroom and fourth full bathroom in the finished basement, which if it had a full kitchen could have legally been considered an apartment. Our house was bursting at the seams, and then the blizzard hit..

 

Also, in 2002, we had a rare white Christmas, and it was not an insubstantial amount of snow either...

I can remember playing a James Bond game with my cousin on his Xbox on the family room TV a day or two before Christmas, and I would constantly get up to monitor the snow accumulation.

Even by Northeast standards, and definitely by Virginia standards, we had a cold and snowy winter during the 2002-2003 season. I would not be shocked if some of that snow from Christmas 2002 was still on the ground when the first flakes started to fall in February 2003!

 

DC and the suburbs are know for canceling school at the drop of a hat at first sign of snow, so me and my two
cousins who all attended high school
in Fairfax County were anticipating a day or two of snow days...

The snow started falling, and within a day we were snowed in. Like most houses in North America, our house in Centreville had the central air-conditioner locates on the side; It was the original Trane XE 900, installed when the house was built in 1989...

If I had to guess, I’d say that old Trane A/C unit by itself was at least three feet high, maybe 3.5 feet at the most. It was mounted on a metal rack that raised it at least another six inches off the ground, and probably brought the total height to at least four feet. I happened to look out a side window one day and see that the air-conditioner was completely buried in snow!

As I said above, that house had gas heat; It’s a good thing we did not have a heat pump, because that would have been extra work in addition to clearing the driveway every few hours!

 

On top of that, we would have all been freezing our asses off, because even without the added obstacle of a textbook “blizzard of the century”, heat pumps simply do not work well once it gets into the thirties outside!

 

The blizzard itself lasted two or three days at most, but it also dumped two or three feet of snow on the DC area; Even after the storm ended, everything was shut down. My relatives couldn’t back to California and Africa because the airport was closed. My aunt and uncle’s family car at the time was a 1997 Plymouth Voyager minivan; My uncle attempted to get to work (in DC) and ultimately prevailed, but the van barely made it out of our neighborhood even with some of digging the van out of the snow every few feet.

School ended up being out for an entire week, which was pure paradise at first but ended up being a headache in the long run...

All of the snow days were used up, so they started tacking in an extra 45 minutes to every school day for several months (I am 99% sure this did not go on for the remaining four months or so of the school year); The extended scho
days inevitably went over about as well as a tax audit on Christmas Eve, not just with students but with faculty and staff as well!

 

When the blizzard was still raging, my dad had to make a supply run to the local Sears...

Back then, in February 2003, we were still a 2-car family; My dad drove a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder SE, and my mom drove a 2000 GMC Safari conversion van.

The van was rear wheel drive and had an open differential (the window sticker my dad dug up confirms this), and I’m also pretty sure it did not have any sort of traction control; This rendered the van pretty much useless for that entire week!

The 4WD Pathfinder, however, was a different story...

A bunch of us piled into the Pathy for the Sears run, and we got on the road; There were cars sliding off the road all around us, but the Pathy blasted through the snow like a Ski Doo! I can remember that my dad was playing his Southside Johnny CD on that trip, and he just calmly listening to “All I Needed Was You” while he blasted through the snow, as other cars went off the road...

 

It is Christmas Eve, so here are some Christmas Eve stories...

 

For starters, Christmas Eve is about the only time I go to church...

With the exception of Christmas Eve, the only times I have been to a church since June 2016 are a wedding and two funerals (and those three events were at the same Catholic church)! I think church is boring, I have an extraordinarily hard time getting though a service sometimes, and I haven’t been to church regularly (as in every Sunday) since I was sixteen years old; I am very nondenominational!

 

On a side note, earlier this year one of my neighbors from across the culdesac (a married mother of three in her late 30s) was telling me how her youngest daughter (2 or 3 at the time) had recently started complaining and crying whenever the family went to church; I looked my neighbor straight in the eyes and said “I’m thirty and I can barely get through church; You’re crazy if you think you can make someone her age sit still and not complain!”

Apparently, they’ve started going to a different church and the youngest child no longer complains, but I still think church is boring.

I have friends who are Jewish and Buddhist, as well as many different denominations of Christian, and I have nothing but respect for their religious beliefs; However, I just don’t like going to church! For me, Christmas is solely about spending time with family and decorating the shit out of my house!

 

On Christmas Eve in 1998, my cousin managed to get out of going to church by exaggerating a sledding injury...

That was one of those years when my dad was stationed on the East Coast and we got a white Christmas. My aunt and uncle’s house in Vienna was on a huge wooded piece of land with lots of hills, perfect for sledding; We were all having a good time until my cousin (10 years old at the time) crashed head on into a tree. He subsequently spent the remainder of the night in a fetal position on the family room couch; One of the adults stayed home with him while the rest of us dressed up and went to church.

On Christmas morning, my cousin was surprisingly spry and walking around as if nothing had happened; During our visit to his parents’ house this past Thanksgiving, he freely admitted that while he’d actually been injured, he had in fact exaggerated the level of pain he was actually in to get out of dressing up and going to church.

 

Oh, and another thing about Church...

The churches my family has gone to over the years tend to get obscenely packed on both Christmas and Easter, the only two days I generally bother going...

Why should I spend my Christmas eve in a folding chair at some overcrowded church for over an hour when I could spend it at home watching old Christmas specials and popping Hershey kisses?!?!

 

When we lived in Northern California (specifically Mountain View in Santa Clara County) while my dad was stationed at Moffett Field, we would often go and visit my aunt and uncle in Monterey, which was maybe an hour and a half away. My aunt and uncle are very active at their church there (my aunt sings and plays the organ, my cousin taught Sunday school for a time, and they even flew the minister out to Hawaii for my cousin’s wedding). My uncle has a 1978 Harley-Davidson.

My dad has had a motorcycle license since the 1980s, but he was out of the scene for over a decade; He really wanted a Harley, but he wisely chose to start off with a smaller and less powerful bike to get reacquainted with riding. He bought a brand new 1996 or 1997 Yamaha Virago in late 1996, not long after we moved back to California.

He and my uncle would regularly ride together; The Yamaha was quiet as a Prius compared to my uncle’s 20-year old Harley, and I was actually scared of that bike when it was running!

My dad and my uncle would ride their motorcycles to church on occasion, and on at least one occasion, my uncle manage to stop Sunday service in its tracks when he roared into the parking lot on that old hog!

 

Getting to my aunt and uncle’s house for Christmas in 1998 was an adventure in its own right!

We were living in Virginia Beach at the time, and a drive up to Vienna should have taken a little over three hours at most under ideal conditions!

This ice/snowstorm blindsided the region while we were driving up there, and while we got there okay, it still took about nine hours!!!

There were car accidents everywhere, and at one point some grubby old man in a beat up red 1979ish Chevy stepside threw something at my dad’s Pathfinder; I remember this well because the guy in the Chevy cut us off, my dad heard something hit the side of his Nissan, had his cell phone out, and was about to call the cops on the guy. I can still remember my dad asking “Charlie, what kind of truck is that guy driving?” I remember saying “red 1978 Chevy Silverado”, though in actuality Silverado was just a trim level back then. I do not remember if my dad actually called the cops.

On that same trip, the cold outside weather combined with the heat being cranked in the Pathfinder caused a long crack to develop along the lower part of the windshield; My dad had the windshield replaced sometime in 1999, and it cracked again in 2003 or so
and had to be replaced again!

I am 99% sure I had my trusty Symphonic TV/VCR combo along for that trip (remember that just driving there took nine hours!), but I’d probably only brought enough VHS tapes for two 3-hour trips. At one point, I remember rolling down my window and picking sheets of ice off the side of the Pathfinder to pass the time while we were stuck in traffic!

 

Christmas 2002, as I stated above, was quite hectic...

We had my paternal grandparents, as well as my maternal grandmother, along with my mom’s sister and her family; Us kids were relegated to sleeping in the finished basement while the adults got the upstairs bedrooms*.

*I now absolutely refuse to give up my bedroom to anyone, and considering that I am much larger than most of my family there is not much anybody can do about it.

My one older cousin (just a few months shy of 17 in December 2002) loves to sleep in and can be an absolute jerk if you interrupt his sleep; On Christmas morning in 2002, I was watching cartoons on the basement TV while I waited for adults to wake up...

He bitched at me at least once because the TV was too loud, and I’m pretty sure I told him in no uncertain terms to go to hell.

It was also pitch black down there because we had all of the lights off; I tripped over something while walking to the bathroom, and when I turned on a light my older cousin freaked out.

This happened a few times that morning, and I was on the verge of flipping my cousin’s air mattress over with him on it, but I controlled myself because it was Christmas.

The adults had told us that we were to stay downstairs until the prearranged time we’d all agreed on to open presents (8:30am I think?). This did not stop us from sneaking upstairs to get food and bringing it back downstairs. My younger cousin (who is six months older than me; He was 14 and I was 13 at the time) insisted that he conduct that first “recon mission” solo because he was quieter and stealthier. He slipped downstairs, and when he came back down with a haul of chocolates, the first thing he said to me was “You lucky bastard! You got a bike!”

I didn’t believe him, so I went upstairs to see for myself; Sure enough, there was a mountain bike under a bedsheet next to the tree!

 

I can tell you where I’ve spent Christmas day every year since 1991!

• 1991: With parents at our house in North Wales, PA
• 1992: With mom’s side of the family at Grandma’s house in Connecticut
• 1993: With parents at house in North Wales
• 1994: With mom’s side of the family at Grandma’s house in Connecticut
• 1995: With parents and paternal grandparents at house in North Wales
• 1996: With mom’s side of the family at Grandma’s house in connecticut
• 1997: With parents and paternal grandparents at our house in Mountain View, California
• 1998: With mom’s side of the family at relatives’ house in Vienna, Virginia
• 1999: With parents at our house in Virginia Beach
• 2000: With parents at our house in Oak Harbor, Washington
• 2001: With mom’s side of the family at their house in Monterey, California
• 2002: With numerous relatives from both sides of the family at our house in Centreville, Virginia
• 2003: Combination of our house Centreville and relatives’ house in Vienna
• 2004: Same as 2003
• 2005: With parents at our house in Doylestown, PA
• 2006: Same as 2005
• 2007: With parents and possibly mom’s relatives at our house in Furlong, PA
• 2008: Same as 2007; First year we had a fake tree
• 2009: With parents in Furlong
• 2010: I lied; I honestly don’t remember
• 2011: With mom’s side of the family at relatives’ house in Vienna, VA
• 2012: Maternal Grandma’s apartment in Springfield, VA
• 2013-2015: With parents in Furlong, but don’t remember specifics
• 2016: First year in our current house but for some reason I don’t think we spent it there; Can’t remember AGAIN
• 2017: With parents in current house; My mom was really sick and spent the whole day in bed
• 2018: With parents in current house
• 2019: Gonna be same as 2018...

It’s amazing that I have an easier time remember the Christmases from 20-30
years ago than the ones from five years ago!

 

True story: I firmly believed in Santa until I was 11! One of my asshole friends told me that he was imaginary...