SIDEQUESTING

As many a good sidequest, this one starts by dealing with rats.

Instead of killing giant rats in a tavern basement, though, it was dealing with rats that were living in my attic. I tried myself for a while, baiting traps and failing to get any rats, when I finally outsourced dealing with the vermin to pest control, who would also seal any entrances they could find. It took weeks, but at least the first rat got taken care of pretty much after the first trap was set. Literally, the pest control guy was gone for five minutes before I heard it snap.

After a little bit, my wife and I started to smell something bad in our bedroom, and was likely to become unbearable. I geared up to go into the attic to deal with the tiny casualty, and couldn’t find it, even going by odor. Then I noticed a gaping hole in our ducting. Because the damage was low and on the wrong side of my view, I hadn’t seen it at first, but from another angle it was painfully obvious. I checked the rest of the ducting and found another part that was ruined.

Understatement: this was a problem.

I was so worried and frustrated that I almost forgot to find the source of the smell.

Looking into the hole in the bedroom ducting revealed a small corpse. A rat with what was clearly a broken jaw, and some nasty fluid leaking from its mouth. This was… upsetting. I knew it was causing problems (which would be undoubtedly expensive), but this felt awful. The poor thing got snapped, and in its pain, it crawled into the warm, soft, safe place it knew to die, presumably alone. I picked it up in some rubber gloves, brought it out, and after a few quiet moments, placed it gently into the trash.

Where else could I put the poor creature?

I gathered myself, and prepared to break the news to my wife, both of the dead rat being removed, and the unfortunate reality of where it was removed from.

Sidequest part two begins here.

It hadn’t been a problem yet, because we were in late fall in south Texas, so it was pretty temperate. A severe cold front was on its way, though, and I only had a few days to get this fixed. We had fireplaces, but using the furnace would be a pointless endeavor, as the breaks were on either side of it. I don’t think I’d have been able to get an HVAC technician out and have it repaired soon enough so… it was off to YouTube to learn how to fix it.

To my fortune, joining ducting is a pretty straightforward process, if tedious and probably uncomfortable in a temperature sort of way. It wasn’t gonna be cheap, though - hundreds of dollars just buying the ducting and collars and tape.

With a sigh, I made a list of the required materials (triple checked, because I did not want to waste time going back and forth), and then started the (emotionally) long journey. I quickly found almost everything I needed:

• Two sizes of ducting
• HVAC tape
• Two sizes of ducting collar
• Big zip ties
• Wait no, they didn’t have the larger of the sizes of ducting collar I needed
• Fuck

I asked an employee, who took me to where I already looked, shrugged, and said “That sucks. Looks like we don’t have any,” and walked away as though they had been even remotely helpful. They didn’t even try to help me search another store’s inventory or like… have even a single suggestion.

There I began a second search myself, sitting next to my laden cart, for the size of ducting collar I needed. Every Home Depot and Lowes in a pretty wide radius, and came up with fucking nothing.

A skill trainer arrives, and the sidequest begins proper.

I probably looked pretty despondent when an old gentleman approached me and asked what I had going on. I recounted my sorry tale, rats and missing ducting collars and all, and he started shaking his head and telling me to put it all back. That was confusing, as he had explained literally nothing to me except that I was drastically overpaying.

He gave me a worn business card, indicating that he his name was David and he was an HVAC technician. That answers some questions, but a business card doesn’t explain how he can save me money. After some conversation, it’s revealed that he’s a retired HVAC tech, and he has the things I would need at his home. He says to meet him there, he just has to check out with what he’s got.

I am bamboozled, desperate, and stressed. I call my wife, to let her know what’s going on. Fuck it, I stop back by my house, grab some cash, and go to David’s house, which is surprisingly close. I pull around back as instructed, and it’s a literal (if well organized) junkyard. After I step out, he waves me over and has me help pick parts out.

I’m following him around, and he’s rambling a bit, asking me questions and talking about his life. Am I handy at all? Do I have any experience at stuff like this? Sure, I’ve done basic plumbing, some vehicle repair, light carpentry. David tells me he owns the property and the adjacent one - about two acres in all. His daughter lives in the house on the other side, and they just store everything in the space between the houses, stuff that he’s accumulated over time from working as an HVAC technician and general handyman. We’re approaching Michelob Time, 5:20, which he has every single day because it was a ritual he did with an old friend of his where they cut out of work ten minutes early to enjoy a beer.

We got the ducting collars which were leaning up against an exterior shed and were all bent up, and we’re walking further back into the property to an ambulance without wheels sitting up on a flatbed trailer. David says a friend of his left it to him after passing away, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it, but figured it was a good place to keep stuff same from the weather. Opening the back, there were hundreds of feet of ducting of various sizes, and we quickly locate the sizes I need from near the top. While I’m extricating the compressed packages of plastic and insulation, he asks me what I do, and I give the most expedient summary I can.

David is incredibly nice and cheerful, and very interesting! He had spent a lot of time in the army, and when he retired from it, went right into HVAC with a friend of his. He learned the ropes, opened his own business, and ran it happily for a long time. He clearly enjoyed routine, talking about going out to dinner with his wife on a regular basis, talking about things he did every day.

We get everything back to the front of his workshop, and he leads me inside. We’re not gonna be working in here, we just needed some tools - a ducting knife, tape, a couple of pairs of pliers, some big zip ties and a zip tie cutter. It was packed with shelves with assorted tools of varying age and utility, as well as a couple of cats and their various accoutrement.

The first test begins here. Easy.

After stepping back into the sunlight, he has me wash the old ducting collars. They were pretty dirty, and the coldness of the water impressed upon me the importance of my current mission. When I mentioned this, David simply reassured me, and said if I needed help, I could give him a call. First, though, the demonstration. He walked me through cutting into ducting, clipping the wire that gives it structure, sealing it around the collar, and taping the pieces together, then had me give it a shot myself.

It was pretty much as straightforward as I was lead to believe on YouTube, which was fortunate, but it was good to have done it not in a dark, hot, stuffy attic first.

I loaded my stuff into the back of my vehicle, complete with the tools I was being lent. When asked how much I owed, David gave me the same expression he made when he told me to put the stuff in my cart back, a sort of squint, head shake, smile, and hand wave that said “No, no, no…“. As it happens, he also said the “No, no, no…” aloud. He didn’t want anything for it, he just wanted to do a good thing.

That’s where I teared up a bit. Can’t lie, it was extremely touching to have him offer this substantial kindness to me in a time where it was very needed. I pressed a few twenties into his hand anyway - I knew to pay it forward and had done so before, and promised that I would do so again for this, but this was my thanks. Next time he went to dinner with his wife, it was on me, and I didn’t have time, but that money could go to paying for a few Michelob Times. It was accepted with great reluctance and much insistence, but I said I’d be back with what I didn’t use.

He said don’t worry about it - just to bring the ducting knife back.

The True Trial

I made it home, prepared to begin fixing. I had two days to get this done before the cold front was projected to hit. After relaying the story of my mentor and his training to my wife, I took a brief break, and climbed into the attic with my supplies. This is where it sucked bigtime.

The attic was, as one would expect, hot and stuffy, and the bigger, more pain in the ass part of the ducting, was right next to the vaulted ceiling. I would be doing my work on an angle in one side, and cramped beneath the low roofline on the other. With the trusty small flashlight I had requested (and received) as a secret Santa gift at work, I managed the replacement. I would give more detail with my struggle of this first replacement, but it’s kind of a haze of wrestling with ducting, angling a flashlight, and crouching awkwardly. One part of the ducting fixed, patched, at least to a degree that we wouldn’t freeze.

Then came the second - it was not as awkward to replace, but I had to be very careful where I stepped, and could only work at certain angles. It was narrower, and easier to reach around, but the insulation around the old duct was more damaged than the other section, which proved to be a pain in the ass.

I wrapped it as best I could, climbed out of the attic, and immediately took a shower, because I was sweaty and dusty and pissed off and relieved.

I called David the next day, thanking him. He was gracious, pleased, and proud of me. I told him I’d return the tools soon, and he said there was no rush.

I now had a story, and more importantly, a house that could be adequately heated.

It was wonderful for it to hit real proper (south Texas) cold and be nice and toasty, in bed with my wife and my dogs, a fire in the fireplace. This peace felt well-earned. Soon, my house would be sealed against the tiny invaders - they could stay in the shed, that we didn’t mind, but damage to our house was unfortunately unacceptable, particularly at the time and of the nature it was.

A few days later, after the worst of the cold had passed, I called David and let him know I’d be by - he wasn’t home, but he told me to just leave the stuff on the work bench at the front of his workshop. I thanked him profusely yet again, and he said that if I ever needed help with something else, anything else, to let him know.

I’ve still got his business card. I should send him a Christmas card.