Because James Says So

Christians around the world like to wear paraphenalia with WWJD to remind them where there moral compass should be. Mormons do the same thing with WWJSD. The last two days, my inner compass has found a new polar star. My trainer James is the fount of all knowledge. If you thought you knew a fact, he is happy to correct you in his loving drill sergeant manner and tell you what the real truth is. I now know a lot of things I did not know before BJSS -- Because James Says So.

You have heard snippets of James Stokes knowledge -- Daniel Boone is buried in Kentucky in the nation's second oldest cemetary. The oldest is in Salem, Pennsylvania (just twenty miles from William Penn Jeffs House of the Seven Mabels). (Anything in parentheses are my comments and did not come from the all-knowing one). The following blog comes from information I gleaned in just one day -- September 11th, 2009.

To mentally picture James, think of the juiced-up trucker in "Larger Than Life" crossed with the squirrel in "Hoodwinked." He never stops talking and will end his sentences with questions like "You know what I am saying?" and then stare at you until you answer him. He looks a lot like the character Renfro in "U. S. Marshalls".

As you guessed, James is a native Kentuckian and is very proud of his state. He has every right to be. Kentucky has the world's largest oil refinery "larger than Texas ever dreamed of" and the state capitol building in Frankfort is an exact duplicate of the one in Washington, D. C. down to "the ivory-covered dome". (This explained to me why there are no Republicans living in Washington, D. C. The elephants were hunted to extinction to supply the ivory for the dome. If the Republicans every gain control of the house or the senate, it is time for safari.)

James can fix anything automotive. This is hardly surprising because he rode his first motorcycle at the age of four. However, this cycle was only 18 inches tall and his mom would only let him drive at 20 mph or less for safety reasons. He began repairing automobiles at the age of 12; these were his own automobiles. He bought his first car when he was 9, his second at the age of 10.5, and his next 2 at the age of 12. When asked how he paid for these, he he replied that he had $50 taken out of each paycheck. (Obviously, Kentucky is very similar to Dickensian England and no child labor laws exist).

After an uneventful high school career, he joined the Navy. He is very proud of his military career and is justifibly so. He is very pro-McCain, anti-Obama, anti-Democrats, anti-illegal aliens, and anti-Russian Commies. While he was stationed in Germany (in the navy) he got the opportunity to fly a Mig Jet. This was during war games, the Americans flew F-16 and the Germans flew Migs. The Russians sold these Migs to the Germany because they were hard up for cash. At one point, he got the Mig to stop on its tail and then shoot straight up in the air. I found this out because I say what I thought was four F-16 in very tight formation, flying in North Carolina. I was mistaken. The jets were actually owned by a private company. The two in the front and the back of the diamond formation are flown by civilians who pay for the opportunity, they are the good guys. The company pilots fly the other two jets, they are the bad guys. The good guys try to force the bad guys into landing without crashing. (The two flown by businessmen with lots of dough were pretty impressive. It is a shame that most truck drivers cannot park in that tight a formation at night at a truck stop.)

James is very popular and has his own myspace page. I did not realize that the number of friends you can have maxes out at 120,000 people but now I know. Some other new facts I now know are:

• Only the southern third of Arizona does not observe daylight savings time. The northern two-thirds observe it.
• Indianapolis used to be in the Central Time Zone but Washington offered it a big chunk of money if it would switched to the Eastern Time Zone so it would not compete with Chicago. (It is comforting to no that Indianapolis is now competing with Detroit ... and Philadelphia ... and New York ... and Boston ... and Miami ... and Atlanta ... ... ...)
• In some states, it legal for pedestrians and bicyclists to walk/ride on the interstate if it is on the north side of the interstate. (I cannot tell you how hard it was to keep a straight face on this one.)

I am now having a problem not egging him on and seeing what new factoids he will share with me. For instance, in South Carolina, there was a huge patch of Kudzu, the parasitic vine that is taking over the Southern States. I marveled at it and said that the patch of growth was even more impressive than Kudzu and I asked James what it was. He replied that it was Fisted Ivy. Apparently, Kudzu was introduced by the Russians to ruin the plants in the Southern States and that Washington has released Fisted Ivy to overgrown and kill the Kudzu. Another example of egging him on happened while driving in Northern North Carolina. There was a spectacular mountain that pops up out of nowhere as you make a turn on the interstate. He told me this was called Dome Mountain. Using the atlas in my hands, I readily found it but was very confused because the atlas called it Pilot Mountain. He told me that it was called Dome Mountains for decades but two years ago, the North Carolina legislature changed the name to Pilot Mountain and the locals refused to call it that and that he was going to support the locals. (Who was I to argue, its has to be a fact BJSS).

I texted several people today letting them know that we were having clutch problems. At high speeds, the car kept slipping out of gear and would not stay in 7th gear at all. The reasons given for the slipping of gears was (and they honestly kept changing every few minutes) was an air leak in the transmission lines, the last tankful of fuel was bad, and my favorite -- the truck has a computer that keeps track of everything done to it and I downshifted incorrectly from 6th gear to 7th gear once, instead of 5th gear. I pointed out that I might have been upshifting and it would have been hard for the computer to tell the difference. He told me that the computer did indeed know the difference because I had been slowing down when I misshifted. I asked if this meant that when slowing down, I had to go all the way to 1st gear before I could start shifting up again. He had no answer for this but I ended up paying the price. For the rest of the day, I had to shift all the way to 1st gear when downshifting before I could shift up again. As it turned out, the clutch had been replaced four months ago and had worn down a little and needed to be adjusted. What a boring answer.

Well, it is 2:30 in the morning and I have to get up at 6:00. I am not allowed to nap because he never stops talking, so I better get to bed. I paid $5.00 for this 24-hour internet connection at a Flying J in Kentucky and my battery in very low and I have no AC power to charge it. I will say one thing for Matt, my previous trainer. He had the truck illegally wired and it was easy to recharge anything. If my head does not explode tomorrow, I will try to record more factoids and pass them on when I can.