I had to leave town for a few days, after I got the truck out, so this is the first chance I have had to do a full post.
I was working on the antikythera mechanism, Err aahh... CTIS and needed a place to run the tire pressures up and down, without the bother of scaring/annoying/endangering the citizenry. Lets face it, running the tire pressure up and down on public streets is a bad idea. I was comfortable with the sugar sand and the deuce seemed at home. The idea was to cycle the pressures up and down a few times to confirm/improve functionality. I do have one valve that lets air in but not out and one the does the opposite.
If you have worked on the CTIS you will understand why I did not want to get into any mud. This was my first fore off the black top in FL, so I was trying to pick my path with care. You will notice in some photos that the ground around the hole looks quite pristine. That is the way the whole area looked before 8 hours of digging, pulling, and winching, or 16 hours of rain. BTW, it sank another foot over night, and I did sleep in my Ford, on the power line, to make sure no one molested my truck.
These pics where taken right before the 30K winch with snatch block was attached. We, with the aforementioned struggle, had managed to move the truck 25+ feet. I did not initially have my camera so I did not get pictures of the initial "Stuck". When first I plunged into the void, formerly an innocuous looking depression, the front bumper went immediately to the ground and the rear tandem came off the ground. I did rock it a little, but only out of spite, I had no delusion that the truck would move under it's own power. Surprisingly, it did move about 12 inches back and forth until it was fully high centered (2 tries).
There are circulating pictures of the event, in it's early stages. I will see if I can contact a few of the participants and attempt to make some better pics coalesce here.
A 250 dollar tram ride finally did the trick. It took 2 attempts and some extra rigging. The wrecker moved about 8 feet back with it's feet dug in more than 3 feet. It is quite a site to see such a large truck with it's front tires off the ground. Again, I was feathering the throttle in the deuce, so I did not get pics. He pulled me another 10 yards before the ground was solid enough for the tires to come up.
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What did I learn? Get a friend with a 5 ton military wrecker and more importantly; stay away from Florida black mud.
