{"id":8040,"date":"2025-09-19T23:05:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T23:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/?p=8040"},"modified":"2025-09-19T23:11:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T23:11:51","slug":"work-on-the-boat-making-sauce-and-a-new-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/work-on-the-boat-making-sauce-and-a-new-weapon\/","title":{"rendered":"Work on The Boat, Making Sauce and A New Weapon!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Greetings and Salutations!
Got hemmed up last night on a project for The Boat.

Hence my absence.
Back when I decided to go ‘Full Contractor’ with The Boat, during one of the “Prime Days” a month and a half ago or so, I found a a rooftop rack for the truck that had a pretty decent price, as well as a coupon that saved me some additional shekels. The problem was when <\/strong>to do the installation as there’s two types of weather here in Tampa…

Too hot or too wet.

As of late it’s been a combo of both.

However we did have some rain the other day that allowed the night (last night in particular) to cool off enough that I was able to finally do the assembly and installation of the rack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was thankfully a pretty straightforward job in its assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s ALSO large enough and from what I can tell sturdy enough for my liking. It has a 250 pound cargo rating, so that’s another bonus.

My rationale is that like in Iraq, I want to make sure I can stash an extra full size tire and rim, plus be able to externally haul ammo cans\/water cans\/cases of rations what have you like I did back in the day in Iraq:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maaaaaaaaaaan I miss that truck…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My 2006 Semi-uparmored ‘Burban.

I got it in trade from a maintenance Company that needed a lo-boy trailer. I was<\/strong> going to have it shipped home on the down-low (in a 20 foot container, sent to McDill) but ‘things happened’ and I didn’t get a chance to pull it off unfortunately.

The Boat is also <\/strong>going to be sporting a Hajji-Squisher like Godzilla (that was it’s name BTW) had in a paycheck or two down the road as well. I mean why the Hell not? Considering that the way things are going? I mean I did<\/strong> get home a lot of the Kevlar door panels that have now been installed on The Boat as I think it’s prudent to get into “Mad Max Mode” sooner, rather than later Aye?

Better to have a ‘battle wagon’ than not amiright?

I also just realized something…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Boat and Godzilla share that same gold-ish\/tan color.

Neat!

I also sanded the hood and front bumper a wee bit as the paint is DOA and the fiberglass of the hood itself was starting to get messed up and had a little bit of delamination due to the UV damage. By sanding it, and eventually (probably tomorrow) priming it, and ‘rattle canning’ it with a couple of layers of clearcoat gloss, it’ll look a LOT better than what it currently is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I also was busy making sauce

The last ‘bottomless bucket of sauce’ finally<\/strong> ran out, and we’d been without any sketties for a week or two, so I started off cooking up 5 pounds of ground beef (80\/20 mix for those who want to know):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I seasoned the Hell out of it, then drained it.

While that was cooking I used the Air Fryer on “Grill” and did up a dozen Mild Italian Sausages, which I then diced into rounds, and added to the pot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For grins and giggles, I then cooked up a package of pepperoni in the same pan I’d done the beef in. Mind you, I lightly<\/em> pan-fried it up, and then drained the excess oil off as well. Once done, it too went into the pot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sausage, Ground Beef and ‘Ronis?

Check, check annnnnd Check.

Three large cans of plain tomater sauce, 2 smol cans of diced tomatoes (I like some textured ‘maters in my sauce) and then seasoned it alllllll over again to make sure it’s got the right flavor and then hey!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A pretty decent meat heavy sauce.
Damned near an “Italian Chili” to be honest…
Thick as all git oot and GREAT on sketties…

So that was last night…
Oh and I forgot… there was also Weapon Maintenance as well.
On the new piece:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Damn Palmetto State and Zezzle
An Italian made Beretta ‘Cheetah’ 84BB in .380
For $299 on clearance.

I carried the same piece in Iraq back in the day as a ‘backup piece’… ammo was rare and hard to come by but it was a nice lil peashooter… easily concealable, a large grip and a 13 round magazine. The one I had in Iraq had the smooth wooden grips (which I’m keeping an eye open for to add to this ‘un)… The reason for this purchase (besides the outstanding price-point) is that it gets added to my “Guns of Iraq” theme where eventually<\/strong> I own a model of ALL the firearms I had over there…

The bitch is going to be sourcing my Dragunov…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking it over, it hardly has ANY ‘wear and tear’ for a former police weapon. It’s truly in remarkably great shape as you can see…

The springs are tight, the slide is actually really hard to pull back as the mainspring in ‘like new’ and overall?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Like I said, NO ‘real’ wear and tear…
The barrel is pristine<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And tomorrow, Sapper and I are going out to Cowboy’s place to bust some caps we hope, weather depending. I’ll then know if it shoots worth a damn, as well as the Glock .45 which needs to be tested as well…

So that’s the beginning of the weekend.
Hope y’alls goes nice and smoothly as well as mine currently appears<\/strong><\/em> to be doing!

More Later
Big Country<\/p>\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings and Salutations!Got hemmed up last night on a project for The Boat. Hence my absence.Back when I decided to go ‘Full Contractor’ with The Boat, during one of the “Prime Days” a month and a half ago or so, I found a a rooftop rack for the truck that had a pretty decent price, … Continue reading “Work on The Boat, Making Sauce and A New Weapon!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8040"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8058,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040\/revisions\/8058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}