Santa's little Sprinter Workshop

nataliedee.com

We're doing it, we're reeeaaallllly doing it.  Sprinter magic is happening in Santa's northcountry Sprinter Workshop.

Our home for the next 6+ weeks is at my folks' place in Adirondacks State Park, NY.  It's got a killer view of the High Peaks and we are living like gods and working like dogs (who eat ice cream for breakfast).  Danimal and I struck out trying to begin construction in Baltimore.  Some ordinance forbidding people to set-up make-shift automotive shops in city parks got in the way.  We fell in a bit of disfavor with some Baltimore parks officials after trying to build such a workshop under the porch of a Civil War-era building and then drive the Pony into it.  It wasn't the best idea we've ever had.  But if we had pulled it off it could have toast (totes/totally) been one more awesome historical event to add to the living walls of that old mansion.  We considered--but attempted not to accept--that the ruckus made over us was the most exciting thing that happened to those handturkeys in the last 20 years but it's probably true.  Either way, Danimal and I had to come up with a new site to launch the Sparkle Pony.  Seeing how the Sprinter's SHC (super high ceiling/that's really the abbreviation and the full name/I try to throw in the term "SHC" more than an appropriate amount just to annoy Dan) made it tricky to find a shop with 8.5' clearance just to do a vehicle inspection.   My folks' offering up their massive 18-foot-tall garage was a happy day.

Then we get here and see how un-tall the garage door is.  It's a normal pedestrian garage door.  The garage is a new construction that I haven't seen before.  In my head the massive garage had a massive door.  A totally standard, comically large, eighteen-foot-tall door that is, like, out of the medieval ages.  

One might wonder how one squeezes an eight-and-a-half-foot tall Sprinter under an eight-foot door.  Here is how:

Pour all of the soup in the house on the frozen 

ground to loosen and rake the gravel away and 

lower the van 3/4-1" to the level of the garage slab.

Advance the vehicle so you get the two front tires onto
the non-pokey cement floor but don't yet deck the roof.

Steady the pony.

Deflate the tires completely which lowers the 

vehicle another 5 to 6 inches.

Know that you are either complete
idiots or complete geniuses.

BOOM BOOM!  You get to drink champagne with
only your shirt and socks on.

We broke a $2.00 light cover off in the process but other than that the thing snapped into place like the sound of a bubble popping.  The Sprinter is in the workshop and it's time to get to work.