August 2, 2000

Staying up late strains mind, muscles

By Garret Leiva
Herald editor
       Tired is falling asleep in the middle of a thought. Which might explain why it took me 45 minutes to finish this sentence. It might also explain the keyboard imprint on my face and the drool on the mouse pad.
      It has been years since I last pulled an all-nighter and it shows - especially the Samsonite-size bags under my eyes. Right now even my daydreams involve snoring. I can't wait until I finally put myself to rest and the Sandman buries me.
      Of course, I have no one to blame but myself for my catatonic state. No one that is besides an old friend and a three-speed Saginaw transmission. It's a long story - 19 hours to be exact.
      For more than a year my eternal project car - a 1972 Pontiac LeMans - has sat sans engine in our garage. Using adequate tools and inadequate knowledge, my childhood friend and I reunited engine and car this past weekend. Which meant the garage was filled with tools, grease and obscenities strung together with tenses that made no sense grammatically.
      Laying underneath the chassis of a 3,700 pound vehicle, tightening a bolt in increments less than a millimeter, gives you ample pondering time. Between the hours of 3 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday I discovered the following, in no particular order:
      - "Righty tighty, lefty loosy" sounds simple in principle.
      - Cast iron vs. flesh is far from a fair fight.
      - The right size socket, wrench, screwdriver, etc. is on top of the car when you're below it. This is especially true with a dangling starter motor inches from your face.
      - Before 2 a.m. you always use the appropriate tool. After 2 a.m. all you need is a hammer.
      - Concrete never softens, even after lying on it for 15 hours.
      I also realized something else while resting my head in a pool of transmission fluid: when it comes to pulling all-nighters I'm out of shape.
      Seven years ago, I was at the all-nighter pinnacle commonly referred to as college. Staying up 24 hours straight studying for an exam was simply part of the procrastinator's curriculum. My crowing achievement was a 30 page term paper on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" composed using a word processor, Cliff Notes and several 2 liters of Mountain Dew. This 48-hour sleepless odyssey led to my one and only out-of-body experience during Non-Western Literature 301.
      Working late at night, or early in the morning, is hardly new territory for me. While I have only recently brandished a Phillips screwdriver at three in the morning, picking up a price stamper is another matter.
      Several years ago, I spent 18 months stocking shelves in a grocery store. Working the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, my body adjusted to eating lunch at midnight and going to sleep after sunrise. My mind, however, could never get past the Muzak being pumped over the store PA system. Nothing tests your will to live like putting up canned yams at 4 a.m. to a Muzak interpretation of Neil Diamond.
      It has been 28 hours since I last held a socket wrench or hit my head on an engine block. I've considered staying up late tonight to see if the engine will indeed turn over. That, however, would require addition electrical wiring and several completed thoughts. Perhaps I'll lay my head down on the 'home keys' for just a few minutes first.
      Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or e-mail at gleiva@gtherald.com.