Fiasco Day

Today was clearly fiasco day here in Wisconsin. My objective this morning was to swap my old mixer with my repaired mixer. I use a huge heavy commercial mixer to make my dough and sauce at my restaurant, and the one we've been using has seen better days. My back up mixer is being stored at my parents' house 5 or so miles away. Simple task--just pick up the new one and drop off the old one. Should take an hour if we dawdle.

So I go out to start up my Toppers truck (a converted 1983 postal truck turned ice cream truck turned pizza truck) around 10am, and the battery is dead. So I give it a jump but it is so dead I have to charge it for 40 minutes or so. Still not working, my dad stops over to help out. He of course gets it going. So he jumps in the back and we head over to his house to get the new mixer.

We arrive, I park the car at the top of the incline of the driveway and we get out. Just then my dad realizes he is locked out. I usually have a key for their place but I didn't have it for some reason. So we are locked out.

No problem, we'll just go to my mom's work and pick up her key. So we get in the truck only to realize that it WON'T START. I disappoint myself. I totally forgot to leave it running. So my dad gets in the driver seat and I push the truck down the driveway and down the street to see if we can throw it in drive to get it started. I ran and pushed as fast as I could and we failed. So the bright red toppers truck is stranded down the street on the side of the road.

We walked back to my dad's house and I called AAA to give me a jump. I guess I really didn't know who else to call to give me a jump start at 1130 in the morning. They arrived at 1210 to my delight because I'm not dressed properly for the cold.

The car starts up, and we head over to my mom's work and get the key. We head back, pick up the mixer, load it up and we are on our way. This time I left it running.

In order to prevent the same problem, we headed straight to the auto parts store for a fresh battery. We walk in, the worker finds us the correct battery, and as we checked out I noticed a sign saying "FREE BATTERY INSTALLATION." I said, "hey, we should have these guys put it in for us." My dad wanted no part of that and I should have listened. Finally I convinced my dad to let the guy do it.

We went back outside. They guy brings out his tool chest and starts to get to work. Immediately I realized I made the wrong decision. Apparently you don't need automotive skills to work in an automotive parts store. Anyway, he got to work, got the corroded old rusty one out and popped in the new one. As he hooked it up he noticed some sparks. They continued anytime both wires hit. He assumed I had some other power source draining the battery so he goes and gets a 20 dollar part that is essentially a switch to turn the battery on and off.

He installs this item, and when he attaches the power we see sparks then a bunch of smoke coming from the engine.

It was at this point I realized that this battery has the positive and negative switched! All this and it was the wrong battery to begin with. We are going on at least a half hour by now. We went in to exchange the battery for another. Back outside the battery doesn't fit so he says "wait just a sec, I'll get some nuts that will make it fit." To this my dad looks at me and says "this guys goin nuts."

I agreed. He returned and we finally made it work. Then I had to go in to pay for the new parts and return the 20 dollar one we didn't need. The car started and we were on our way to finally drop off the mixer. One hour I will never have back. And I was freezing.

It was almost 2pm by now. I finished half of my task in 4 hours rather than 30 minutes.

The rest of the day was cake, but when we finally hooked up the mixer.........it didn't work.

--D