Pictures of my drive shaft

Sorry, I just couldn't resist putting this up!

Last night (until 0200!) I spent a couple of hours under my Jeep installing a new drive shaft. It isn't what I usually blog about, but I put up a step by step of my install here:

http://forum.jkboard.com/viewtopic.php?t=4402&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

That forum is a jeep discussion board where I have learned a lot about how to keep my new all-consuming habit of Jeeping going.

Here is a pic of the new drive shaft:



and if you can't see it above, the address is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccoppola/3386187245/sizes/l/in/set-72157615831201044/

That's a neat picture because you can see the big rolling trunk I took to Iraq twice in front of the Jeep.

Anyway, the step by step install has lots of interesting details, if that sort of thing interests you. If you know much about vehicles, you will quickly see that I am a rank amateur, but that doesn't stop me!

I think it is part of the psyche of a surgeon to believe that he or she can do anything better than anyone else! Why else would we dare to cut a person open? If we believed that someone else could do it better, it is just a matter of conscience: we shouldn't do the operation; we should call it off and get the best to do it.

Unfortunately, that necessary confidence spills over into other areas with out justification, and surgeons often believe they can do anything! That is why you see surgeons crashing $200,000 sailboats, falling off of rock faces, losing money in the stock market, and going down in flames at karate dojos.

I am no different, and I half expect something to fall off my Jeep at any moment as I drive down the highway. In fact, it does trouble me that I had a few extra parts left over when I finished my drive shaft install.

Before I wanted to be a pediatric surgeon, long, long, ago, I wanted to be an engineer. But then high school geometry turned out to be more frustrating than high school biology. I have still kept that love of building things. (And deconstructing them as my parents can attest, after losing a TV and a vacuum cleaner to my curiosity.)

Now the most fun of all is that I can share this love of building things with my sons. We have built rockets, potato cannons, and all sorts of modifications for the Jeep together.

February was a hard month. As March passes by, I have found that time and a little grease on my hands has helped to cleanse the doubts and worries from my mind.