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I would like to personally thank all of you that sent me text messages, PMs, or plainly had someone else call me to make sure that I was fine after the events mid afternoon yesterday (I say this as yet another severe thunderstorm warning comes over the NOAA Weather Radio).

Although the storms and F5 tornado was 5 miles south of me, the impact was more than I had ever felt. 51 people, including many children, lost their lives. The tornado ran through many metropolises in Oklahoma, to include Moore, which took a similar direct hit on May 3rd of 1999. There were few deaths on that day because of the timing of the storm. Yesterday's tornado reared its ugly head at around 3:05 p.m., right as school was getting out. The only two schools that I have heard about thus far were elementary schools, very young and confused children due to the weather events. On a wonderful, yet still sad note, many teachers risked their lives for the lives of children. Selfless acts of kindness; these people deserve awards that they will never see.

I sat at my desk at work yesterday, crying for two reasons...one was for the lives that were lost and the impact that that will have on the families of the people; the second was because even though I have met but only one of our members in this community (minus friends and family that have joined), many of you sent me messages to make sure that I was fine. People that I don't know personally wanted to make sure that I was "ok". Thank you all, I am very touched.

Thank you,

Chantel - SomethinBoutaTruck
Dave - #32
Jeff - Voodoo
Jon - Starspangled-6.0
Nate - Trumpster1
Brian - Buckeye76
Cody - Obsession11
Kyle - Machster
Paul - Honeybadger

No wind headed up I65 north for work this week, so I decided to take it easy and see what kind of trip MPG's I could pull off. I had around 300 lbs of gear with me, full tank of CountryMark ethanol free premium gas, InTune, Airaid MIT intake. Oh, and the truck idled for 20 mins at 2 different stops to keep the AC on for the Dog.

End result? 20.1 mpg's! (Calculated manually, see the fuelly link below) I was very impressed. I did not do any drafting, coasting, etc, simply put the cruise on (76 mph), accelerated normally, and kept my foot off the floor.

so yesterday some buddies of mine got into a little mischief.. we found ourselves in a vacant sand lot with a bunch of dirt bikers; all of us being bikers ourselves, we did not hesitate to pull over and talk to them. fast forward about 10 minuets... they convince me to take my truck on part of the sand track they were riding on. long story short.. i was doing figure 8's around 2 power lines. :mrgreen:

So I decided to be wise and get tires that FIT my truck 'as is'. Really wanted to jack it up but..money is the obstacle. So I got 50,000 mile warranteed tires that are sooo smooth and forgiving. Perhaps in a couple years I will upgrade to another GM truck with a decent lift and lots of rubber.

Satisfied,
Chris

Ended up spending some time yesterday at work going through the "How to" section and woke up this morning and got the following accomplished:

1. Washed and detailed the truck.
2. "Steam cleaned" the engine compartment. Great first attempt, but was still a little gun shy of "washing" the engine compartment too much.
3. "Seafoam'd" the crank case.
4. "Seafoam'd" the upper engine using the brake buster vacuum line. The "white smoke" was a cool effect.
5. Changed the oil and upgraded to full synthetic. BTW, when you say the Oil "shoots" out of the drain plug, that's an under statement!
6. Rotated the tires since I had it up in the air.
7. Installed bike "mounts" on my tool box
8. Cleaned up and organized the tool box
9. And cleaned up and organized the interior

All in a couple of hours. So to everyone who has written or added to a "How To" article on this site - THANK YOU!

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