Special to ThisCrazyTrain.com
Hidy
ho, Ms. Cindy!
Billy
Bob here in St. Catharines. My missus, Daisy
May, was feelin’ right badly for you the other week, cuz your phone lost juice
and you was forced to GO it incommunicado. Daisy May understands why them older coaches
– with the “rich Carinthian leather” seats – don’t got no wall plugs, but she
don’t get why them new train cars don’t come from the factory wired with
outlets for you folks. Daisy May says
findin’ a power outlet on a GO train is like a Easter egg hunt, even when you
got the list of wired coaches put
together by that GO Voyageur person. So, Daisy May turned to me ‘n’ said we gotta
do somethin’ for that nice Cindy ‘n’ all her LSE friends, so they never gets
stuck like that again.
By
“we”, my missus meant me, and I knew I was in way over my head, so I got on the
CB radio to my cousin Herb. Maybe you
heard of him? Back in the 60s, he hosted
his own local TV show called Handyman Herb's DIY Hacks – with Herb Hellfinger. After explainin’ the situation, Herb laughed
and said he knew right off what the fix was.
Herb
said, “Every GO train car has outlets, Billy Bob. The problem is folks don’t have the right
plugs for ‘em”.
Huh?
O’
course, Herb was right – he always is. He
told me every GO train car he’s ever been on has these plugs:
I
figured I’d be real smart, so I told Herb that folks just gotta buy one of these
connector doohickeys off Amazon.
Well, Herb split a gut when he heard that, followed by, “Folks ain’t
gonna part with their hard earned dough for that! We’re gonna show ‘em how to build an adapter
for way less!”
Huh?
We
hopped in my Ford pickup and headed over to WallyMart (that’s what we call
Walmart down here) and got us one o’ these here mini power bars:
Next
stop, Home Depot, where we bought the all-important lockin’ plug:
Back
at Herb’s workshop, he cut the cord on that mini power bar about 6” from the
regular plug and tossed it in his “keeper bin” – Herb don’t throw nothin’ away. Then he stripped down the insulation on the
wires and connected the lockin’ plug and we was done! Herb says make sure you connect them wires to
the right prongs, like black to “hot”, white to neutral, and green to ground.
Here’s
the project all set to GO:
Herb
says if you’re goin’ this route, you might wanna upgrade your DIY project and
invest in a surge protector, too, cuz you don’t want dirty power on them trains
fryin’ your valuable ‘lectronics, eh.
Even them regular outlets
have green lights to tell you if it’s safe to plug in your
gear. The higher the number of joules on
one o’ them protectors, the better, or as Daisy May says, “Size matters.” WallyMart gots this one that’s good enough to
protect your fridge:
So,
there you GO, Ms. Cindy. Toss that in
your bag and you’re never frettin’ about that cell phone dyin’ on you again! And Daisy May will be feelin’ a whole lot
better, too.
Best
wishes from the other side of the lake,
Billy
Bob
