To recapture the past week… it was way too much of everything.
Week ago Friday I went and bought a small cargo trailer. wanted one for a really long time and figured, why not now…
Really nice as it fit in the garage. Due to our new CRAPPY HOA that says you can’t do anything outside you house without a permit and their approval, parking this outside is forbidden.
We thought about leaving Sunday but some guy was to come pick up some left over furniture (a big , heavy, ugly, wall unit with a desk in the middle… But he never showed and never let us know he wouldn’t… bummer. So we started for the OK house on Monday.
NOTE to SELF: check the damn weather a lot more….
The trip started ok the little trailer tracked real well and we were getting excellent mileage…. hummm maybe too good? but was ok, we got to Limon and stopped as normal… then headed on East… when we topped the hill east of Limon we figured it was going to be bad…
loo
But it was a tail wind and that was helping us along… now we know too much help was being given… anyway… sailed on to Colby…Stopped for gas and neither of us were hungry so we opted to head on east…. oooops… didn’t get more than 5 miles out and the road turns more South East then East and it was about the time the winds were reaching peak (later to be found at sustained 60mph with gusts). One big gust that went three directions and the little trailer when a dozen directions… When I look back I see it is sideways… not in the road but vertically… as I hit the brakes the trailer determined it could fly and sail right on by… we did a 180 and ended up sliding backwards… Once it stopped I am looking at a big truck coming toward us , but fortunately he got stopped way back and that caused the traffic to go around… I got out to assess the damage and clear my shorts…
Some how it didn’t flip the jeep, and didn’t come totally unglued… in fact the only thing tore up was the hitch… twisted and bent of course and that lower corner that slide on the pavement… oh and the fender on that side… Now here is the good and bad..
Good – it was a great little trailer, solid built… and empty
Bad – It was empty so it didn’t take much wind to make it rock and roll…
Good – since it was empty it didn’t get hurt much and didn’t hurt the stuff inside…
Bad – had it been full it likely would have been a lot m more stable?
Now in this position you can barely tell but there is a set of couple of lines running down the roof… somehow and I think my eyes were closed or froze? it slide into the guard rail. Couldn’t have slide along the rail much as the lines are not gouges or deep but it did bend in the roof a bit…
Good – there was a guard rail and we didn’t go off the embankment…
Bad – There was a guard rail and we couldn’t move in any direction, not that we could have even with out but we were stuck in the spot…
Good – due to many more “Blow over” on this stretch the highway patrol was there with in 10 minutes…
Bad – It required the patrol and a wrecker to get me moved out of the way…
Good – the wrecker only had to pull the trailer over on the wheels and I could tow it back to town
Bad – The hitch was twisted enough that we needed to do something with that or leave it in Colby KS?
The wrecker was maybe 10 minutes behind the patrol, again due to numerous blow over on this next few miles of road… Also the Press showed up… they didn’t want to drive all the way down to get a good picture of a big truck over so they got mine and later we found we made the Colby new paper, FRONT PAGE !…
Good – The patrolman was an OSU fan… believe that or not, way out in Western KS…
Bad – We had to meet in this situation…
Anyway the wrecker got in position, hooked the winch on and poof… it came back over fine… well not fine but towable…
This was just before it leveled out…
So we pulled back to Colby, paid the wrecker guy and took it to a body shop that said they could straighten the hitch so we could be back on the road… notice in the above that the only real damage is to the corner molding, some thick aluminum… Anyway the body shop got the hitch leveled out enough to tow it home and I paid them… same credit card? We struck for home about 2.5 hours delayed… Going rather slow till I figured out how the trailer was pulling and not wobbling or anything… and we were moving on with a much diminished wind by now until….
We passed through Russel, KS… and I noticed that the traffic on the west bound side was …. well it went to nothing… hummmm… and then there was a lot of traffic on the south side frontage road headed back west… hummmm then at Wilson the road was blocked and and we were directed into Wilson then told to head west as the east direction was closed due to fire… you remember Monday… all the fires? So we had to drive back about 12 miles to Russell, Ks and at that point I figured I better fill the tank again as we didn’t know when we would get to the next station… we got filled up and headed south on HWY 281… about the only way out of town but while waiting at Mc-D’s we over heard people say that Wilson was being evacuated due to the big fire started south of Lake Wilson (north of the Interstate and it was threatening everything to the south… We had seem some smoke as we pulled into Wilson but nothing right there , yet… Anyway we head south to Great Bend … nothing much exciting in that stretch as the wind had died down and we were going much slower and usually down off the high points… At the Bend we headed back East to McPherson and then got on I-135 and rejoined our regularly scheduled road trip. We had thought about heading south from Colby but started hearing about fires in the panhandle then as we headed south out of Russell we hear that there were fires near Buffalo, Laverne, Fort Supply, etc.… so glad we didn’t head south too early we could have gotten into those big problems… With all that we got home about 11pm and just crashed out…
Ooh and I almost forgot.. In Russell we came on this sign… never knew about the Second?
That was way too much for one day but we were adding things up as we go…
Tuesday… I am resting up and went out to do a few things on the Ham Radio Computer… we had put in a new SSD drive couple of years ago or maybe it was last year… anyway, it was acting real slow and then poof… it quit and would restart… wouldn’t read that new SSd hard drive… I worked on it and worked on it and then… just gave up… Crap… add that to the list…
So now I am waiting to hear form the insurance company… nothing heard on Tue, so I came in and worked on catching up my credit card charges… I keep a close eye on it and keep it in Quicken and … hummmm there are two charges on the card that I don’t recognize… and they are big ones… like $350 dollars total big… I asked did she use the card for beauty supplies? NO… she is beautiful enough without some foolish supplies so someone, somewhere, picked up out card number and went to using it… we called the card company and got it stopped, and listed a fraud alert, which of course requires them to send new cards… At least I caught it before they ran up a really big bill… Now we also wait for new cards to arrive…
I did get a sunset picture Tuesday and boy it shows there was still tons of ash in the air..
We made a trip to see Sherries Mom Wed and took care of some small stuff… I spent time packing things up, in hopes we have a trailer or we rent one…
Thursday since the jeep was so dirty and probably needed the seats cleaned real good we took it down to get detailed. The weather was nice so good time to get it done… I also called around and found a repair shop that said they could fix the trailer since they build trailers locally.. I took it to them Friday and the price seemed reasonable for the amount of stuff they would have to do so I left it there to get at least the hitch fixed right for towing… All this time I am trying to get the Radio Computer to work by using a back up copy to rebuild another HD… for some odd reason.. it hasn’t worked out yet… So I guess I may need to get a new HD and start over?
Today was another good and bad day… We got our Sam’s Club card rebate check, …
Good – we get a rebate check for using the Sam’s club card…
Bad – you have to go to a Sam’s club to cash it…
Good – The Edmond Sam’s is not too far..
Bad – I left the old card at home – hey it ain’t no good anyway , oh, wait you use it to get into Sam’s and identify you as a member… oh well the nice lady there wrote out the number for us so we could use some of the rebate money to buy a few things…
So we went to Edmond to get it cashed and yes it was more than enough to warrant getting it done quick… One more thing… This guy was advertising big fibs today…
There was only one guy in there and that ain’t no truck… I at least know that much….
That about wraps up the week of things that have been way more excitement than I needed … I sure hope this next week is much better…
WD0AJG