Happy people have sunburned knees

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I woke up this morning with sunburned knees, and I’m thrilled about it.

Sunburned knees indicate a person has spent the day outdoors, enjoying some kind of activity that involves sitting and possibly having an adult beverage. Your kid’s baseball game, fishing, riding in an air boat, feeling like Marlin Perkins from Wild Kingdom because you’ve seen so many gators — these might be some of the activities that are conducive to sunburned knees.

George has driven a lot of things – I tease him and say, “If it’s got an engine and can move in a forward fashion, George Parker can drive it.” He’s done heavy equipment of all types, he can flat make a dozer work, but the air boat was a totally new experience.

We took the day off yesterday, because our buddy Nick Shaughnessy of Truckitsmart.com invited us out for an air boat ride. If you’ve never been on an air boat, let me describe this piece of equipment for you: It’s a giant engine pushing about 90,000 horses attached to a 7-lb. piece of fiberglass that floats. (OK, it might be an 8-lb. piece of fiberglass, but it’s exponentially lighter than anything an engine pushing 90K usually moves around.) They’re loud, they’re scary and they’re a ton of fun.

George and Nick (right)George and Nick (right)

Nick is a native Florida boy. He knows all the best spots to see flora and fauna, and we seriously saw more animals than I ever expected to see while riding in something louder than thunder. Deer, eagles, gators, cows (yes, cows – they have cows free-ranging the swamps around here, I’m assuming to feed the snakes and gators) and four drunk fishermen from Louisiana, along with so many different water fowl I couldn’t even begin to name them all. Oh yeah, we saw a turkey, too. Nick also took us through an ancient cypress forest, and if a pterodactyl had flown out of the trees I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

George got to mark “air boat” off his “list of things to drive before he dies.” He said it’s harder than it looks, but he didn’t kill us, so I think he did a great job. I didn’t even attempt it – I was absolutely not going to get that thing get bogged down somewhere we would have to step out into the muggy bog and get our legs chewed off by gators.

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Today is a work day. We played yesterday, but today we get down to bidness. The show trucks are here, and our own Precious is going in the Wash and Show contest for everyday working trucks. We will be out there polishing and getting her ready, while we live-tweet and take as many pictures as humanly possible without blinding ourselves on all the shiny chrome. I’m pretty sure when everyone gets done, you will be able to see this parking lot from Mars. If the aliens are coming, they’ll land here.

If you’re in Florida this weekend, come on down to the 75 Chrome Shop and burn your retinas a little at the Pride and Polish Wildwood Show. If you can’t make it, we’ll do our best to make sure you see all the trucks right here on Overdriveonline.com.