Cuyler Callahan's Official Home Page

What a year it has been. Reflecting on everything that has happened really makes me think about the busy lives we all live.

This year started off with lots of snow and lots of work. Many of the soldiers in my shop prepared for a tour in Afghanistan, so we were swamped with work with so many people off the floor on training.

Multiple exercises and the floods in Manitoba took many soldiers away from home for over nine months straight, and with all that man power gone, well, the mass amounts of broken vehicles coming from exercises and the operations had us working over time.

But eventually things calmed down. Then I got married in the summer to a wonderful woman. The wedding was wonderful. Many friends and family showed up. We got so many gifts we had to move into a bigger apartment. I would like to put out a thanks right now to everyone who supported us at the wedding and helped us get started with our life.

Shortly before the wedding, at the bachelor party, we were paint balling and I went for a slide and caught a stick, bending my ankle under me. This resulted in a broken ankle. I really didn’t want to wear my big moon boot – given to me by the doctors – while walking down the isle, so I wrapped my ankle up real tight and stuffed my swollen ankle into my parade boots. Everyone was surprised I was walking as well as I did. I did limp a lot and by the end of the night by ankle had swollen up a lot more.

After our nice wedding and reception, we settled down into our new home in September. In October I left for CFB Cold Lake. There I received OJT training on Aircraft Maintenance Support Equipment (AMSE). I also got to work out in a shop by the bombing range. We were told we could not do P.T outside due to bears.

A Buddy of mine went hunting and got his first buck. The Antlers were scored at 405 points. Apparently the record is 415! Not bad for his first deer. We were quite impressed. He gave me a few pounds of meat. He got about 80lbs of his buck. I have skinned a few dear now, and I know the average is about 30lbs to 40lbs of meat. Nice job!

Up in Cold Lake, my buddies and I also experienced a very sad time. As we came back to base from the weekend – me driving home on the weekends to see the wife our buddy “Z” pulled us into his room. I first saw a bunch of crime scene tape on “HB’s” door. I assumed he was going to talk to us about a bunch of shit the boys got into. But the news was far worse. On November 13th, 2011, HB passed away, resulting from suicide.

We all took it pretty hard. The worst part, trying to understand why. Nobody really will know why, we only can come up with our own theories to make sense of it. The next couple of weeks were tough. I staff really helped us get through it though. We had a really nice memorial service for him, and a bunch of guys were sent to Ontario to be Pallbearers.

The beginning of December saw us back in Edmonton. We are now getting ready for the Christmas Holidays where we will have 3 weeks off. We had our Soldiers Dinner on the 8th, and were lucky enough to get the following Friday off, leading in this weekend. Now I have one more week at work, then I get the next 3 weeks off.

I hope you all had a good year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

On November 13th 2011, Craftsman Matthew Hunter-Brown passed away. I met this amazing person sometime in September, but never really got to know him until the beginning of October when HB – as I came to know him – and some other Craftsman, including myself, where sent up to CFB Cold Lake on a OJT rotation to practice our skills as Vehicle Technicians.

Over the next month and a half I came to know HB as a joyful fellow. He made us laugh with his witty comments, and lightened our day when he would walk into the shop early in the morning with a smile on his face. The rest of us would stare at the guy with disbelief at how he could be so happy in the morning.

HB was truly a friend to us all. Not having him around on the shop floor really puts a damper in the day, and brings a realization that life is fragile and we should not take it lightly.

Rest in Peace HB wherever you are. I hope you can party it up until your friends join you.

My dog Bear was hit by a car. Actually probably about a month ago. I have just been busy getting married and have not posted much on the site lately. More on the marriage later.

I became Bear’s owner when I was about eleven years old. I made sure I paid five bucks for him so he would be my dog only. Truth was he was very much part of the Callahan family and all took good care of him.

We got him off my Uncle Dwayne after his German Shepherd and Australian Shepherd had pups together. Bear grew up to have all the colors of a German Shepherd, but the fluffy fur, height, and tail of an Australian Shepherd.

Bear was a very kind dog. He would never hurt anything and actually could be found sleeping with the cats curled next to him.

He also had a problem with pissing on everything. I saw him piss on our cat Mufasa. The cat did not take to kindly to that and swatted his wiener, sending bear yelping back to the house. He pissed on a neighbor that stopped by to talk to my parents. He kicked bear, and we weren’t upset one bit.

The best one, he walked up to a newborn baby calf and pissed on its head. The mother cow was pretty upset and chased him down and ran him over.

Bear loved chasing sticks. I could throw a stick into the water and Bear would swim it and get it every time. Almost to the point of drowning so  I would have to stop throwing the stick because Bear did not know when to stop.

Bear was a great dog. He was a pup at heart until the day he died. He was eleven years old when he died, and we think he might have been crossing the road to go off and die anyways because he was starting to hurt real bad in his old age. Maybe he even jumped in front of the vehicle. Some animals will do that when they want to die.

Either way, I will miss the old boy, and Baby Bear – as I called him – will always be in my heart.

Cheers Bear

bear

So before I even start this post, I already know I’m going to get flamed. Somebody is going to have an issue with what I’m going to say, and challenge my opinion.

Well really, I don’t care. If you have your opinion, you can share it, in the comments, but don’t expect me to argue with you and respond back. This is my opinion, and I’m laying it out here for all to see. Take it as is, and don’t expect me to respond back to any flames.

So here it goes.

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So yesterday my fiance and I where getting some pizza and wings. We were sitting in the waiting area on the couches and reading some papers on the coffee table.

I started reading an article written by a gay guy. His article was talking about how he went to university and is so fed up with the other gay people making a fuss about how badly they are treated and how they are not respected and all that. He thinks otherwise and now believes the gay community is just causing problems with a society that has pretty much accepted them.

His article is not about what I’m going to go on about. But in his article he mentions about how he and his partner and kid live in Seattle and have a pretty good life.

That is what struck me. He, his partner, and “kid”.

My issue is the kid. I don’t bother gay people, gay people don’t bother me. I even have friends that are gay. I don’t think being gay is right, but this is a free country, and they can do what ever they want, I’m not going to cause a problem over it. I still respect them. I’m just not gay, and have no idea what it is like to be gay.

What bothers me is two gay people raising a kid. I know this issue has been brought up in government assemblies around North America. It seems now that some of the states actually allow gay couples to adopt.

But the thing that bothers me is gay people have been fighting for their “Natural Right” to be gay. Okay, they win, they can be gay because it is “Natural” and a chemical in their brain which makes them gay, apparently.

I’m not sure I actually buy the chemical part, either way I don’t care why their gay. They can make choices about themselves, that is fine. The point is they fought for their Natural Right, and to be married.

Okay, thats fine. But I don’t care what anybody says. A kid being raised by two gay people is not natural, and not right. There is no chemical to blame for this. Two guys, or two chicks, can’t naturally have a baby, so why should they be allowed to adopt a baby. That is not natural.

The kid is not of his adopted gay parents blood. Chances are he will have no chemical in him to make him more inclined to be gay. Growing up he will most likely want to meet a girl, but he was raised in a house hold that does not really promote it. This will cause confusion in his mind.

Then at school, the same argument comes up all the time. He will be teased because his parents are gay.

People can be gay, but no matter what anybody says, it is still the second choice nature intended. A child should be raised the natural way, and then can choose for himself later if he wants to be gay or not.

Some people would argue that being raised by just a woman, or just a man, is about the same as a gay couple. But it is not.

A single mother still raises the child the best she can, and still instills the original natural plan in the child. The child grows up knowing she has a father somewhere and that one day she will find a man to love.

Growing up with two gay parents instills in the child confusion. “Where is my father?” “Why do I have two fathers?” “Where is my mother?” “Do I have a mother?”

There is confusion. Gay people can be gay, I don’t think they should raise children.

If nature intended two people to be gay, then nature also intended them to be without kids.

So for four non-consecutive days, I have been repairing this old 1952 Farmall Super H. My buddy Terry worked on it with my for the first two days, then my buddy Tim helped me on the last two days.

Me and Terry are both Canadian Forces Vehicle Techs and my buddy Tim is a Canadian Forces Combat Engineer.

We found this tractor at the old dairy farm I worked at before joining the military. I went down for a visit to the old farm when my old boss mentioned he picked up some antique tractors and wondered if I would be interested in fixing them up. For something to do you know, if I got bored. It seemed like a fun project, so I decided to take it up.

I asked my buddy Terry if he would be interested in working on it with me. It is always more fun to have somebody to work with I find. And he has been a mechanic longer then me, so it was nice to have him help when things got complicated.

When we first started working on the tractor, we found that it had compression. It had no spark, leaks in the input seal to the transmission, the coolant system had multiple leaks as well. Rudy wanted the tractor to be 12 volt, instead of 6 so he had to take the generator in to be converted. The electrical was a mess and needed lots of new wires installed, plus some of the wiring was not hooked up correctly according to the manual.

Terry hooked up the wiring pre-new generator. I hooked it up post-new generator. Most of the wiring was correct accept for a few things regarding the fuse box. Lighting to fuse box cable, and start switch to fuse box cable were not hooked up correctly, and there was an extra wire off the amp gauge to the fuse box that didn’t even belong. I do not blame Terry, as I expect he just replaced wire with new wire and put wires back where he found them. I had to use the wiring schematics to figure out the new generator and these few hick-ups, but after a couple hours everything was hooked up correctly and works great now.

The 12 volt lights Rudy has are not the correct ones and so we need to find the correct lights for this tractor. According to the book, the whole light and housing assembly is replaced when the lights are replaced, but it will be pretty hard to come across those housing now. So we need to find the right light, and replace it in the housing then repair that. But that is minor.

The Transmission was filled to the top with water. We drained the transmission and replaced it with clean oil after replacing the input transmission seal. We also replaced the coolant hoses and took care of the leaks. The air filter is one of those wet filters that are filled with engine oil. The air goes through the oil and that is what picks up any debris. We cleaned that filter system and replace. Rudy had the carb rebuilt before we got to the tractor.

As for the spark, we just needed a wire connected to the grounding switch, as well as new spark plugs which we had to gap properly. We cleaned the gas tank as well with var-sol and had to clean out the mounting hole threads, as well as clean the fuel jar and replace the inline fuel filter.

We reconnected the jack shaft from the clutch shaft to the input shaft into the transmission. We drained and replaced the hydraulic sump oil, and replaced the main hydraulic hose from the pump to the valves. It was cracking bad and when I took it off it crumbled.

All in all the project went pretty smooth. It was my first real old restoration project. We got the hood and front cover back on. Rudy said in the summer he will take it and get the it painted professionally.

Here are some videos of us test driving the tractor after we got it running. Hope you enjoy.

Oh and here are a bunch of pictures as well: