Trip report (long)

[ralexander03@snet.net (Rick Alexander)]

If the story of our great adventure is not your cup of tea then delete now.

This trip must have been too well planned (Murphy and all). In hind sight I
should have just said it's going to take a week and gone by myself. I drove
the first 5 hours, Lyman drove the next 5 hours and Merrilee was into her
shift by a couple of hours at 1:30 Friday morning. That's when it went
South, literally. Lyman was navigating and I was sleeping in the bed of the
truck. It was on I 71 Westbound in a construction zone where they were
working on the slow lane and the breakdown lane. There were Armco barriers
up keeping the two lanes of traffic very close to the side of the pavement
towards the median (50' wide and 6' deep). In actual fact there was only
about 4" from the line to the edge of the pavement which dropped off sharply
for three inches or so. Next to this drop off there was from six to eight
inches of hard gravel then newly placed top soil and hay. It had rained all
day so rather than top soil this was really mud, closer to slime actually.
Some of you know what happened next and the rest of you can probably make a
very good guess but here it is. The left tires fell off of the pavement onto
the gravel. this upset the trailer and attempts to get the rig back on the
road way simply made the trailer swing worse until it eventually took out
the drivers side of the Cadillac that was in the slow lane. Eventually the
front tire of the truck went into the six inch deep new top soil (mud). This
of course pulled the truck into the median. The truck proceeded sideways
down into the median with the trailer at right angles following in its
normal course. Apparently this was the attitude of things down into the
bottom of the median where we lost our fuel tank and then up the other side.
This is where the tractor trailer comes into play. The tractor trailer was
East bound in the fast lane probably doing 80 or so. Fortunately for all,
the East bound road side was in a very similar condition to the one we had
just left. When our truck hit the side of the road it kept us out of the
path of the big truck and whipped us around to end up facing East with the
trailer seriously jackknifed. I'm sure the truck driver must have pulled off
at the next exit to check his load. Two cruisers, two fire trucks, an
ambulance, and two wreckers arrived to investigate. We were towed to a motel
where the hook driver left us with a dolly, Mikes car and our bags. There
wasn't anything to be done till the morning so we tried sleeping. At 7:00 I
got up and starting making the insurance calls. It was about 10:30 when
Merrilee and Lyman got up and I ran out of people to call. At 2:00 in the
afternoon we had the truck back and were on the road again. Not too bad, we
had only lost 12 and a half hours. Lyman was simply too shaken up to
continue so Ron 'Cheapass' Pieper made some calls and had arranged for
Lyman's transport back home by the time we had reached Columbus, OH. Lyman,
your everything, thanks for trying. With Lyman safely on his way home we
decided that there was no decision to be made. We simply had to press on. We
could actually have made it back home for work on Monday with a few longer
days and shortening up some stops along the way. Too much planning again. It
turned out that Merrilee could not muster up the nerve necessary to get back
in the saddle again. So the remainder of the trip was driven by me which
made overnight stops and extended fuel stop necessary. We were also hindered
by leaking fuel. It turns out that we had left some very important gaskets
on that median in central Ohio. I could only put 15 gallons in at a time or
spill fuel until there was only 15 gallons left. This meant that we were
forced to three times as many fuel stops and that is a lot of time. We
missed Daun at his spread but did manage to pick up a pristine dash for
Rolling Roc. Thanks Daun, sorry we missed you but getting going was really
important right then. We pushed on to Ron 'Cheapass' Piepers where we washed
some of the many pounds of mud out of Mikes car. Things really were filthy.
Brian 'Big Mac' McGarvey's transmission was put in the garage and a clean
new one was put in the truck for ATS Patrick Bureau. Ron, sorry for the mess
we left in the street in front of your house. I hope the fuel oil washes
away before the neighbors get upset. And send our thanks to Amanda for
letting us clean up in the house and leave her with a mess there too. Next
stop, Mike VanAmburgh in Sedalia, MO to deliver the some what rounded off
car. Mike, that was mighty magnanimous of you to give us such a warm welcome
after we customized your car. Mike arranged to get some welding done to the
trailer and he and Kim took us out for breakfast. Let me know when that
adjuster gets in touch with you and what he has to say. Somewhere along here
Allyn Malventano and Brian 'Big Mac' McGarvey called us just to check in and
see if we were ok. Those calls sure did lighten up my mood. It's nice when
you can see that people do care. Thanks guys. Next stop, Austin... wait a
minute, that's ATS Patrick Bureau on the phone. He recommends that we come
to Dallas to stay with Brian Wagner and proceed to Austin in the morning.
Really good thinking! We certainly weren't thinking very well by this time.
We did go to Dallas, delivered the re-built tranny to Patrick and proceeded
to down some suds with Brian, Kim and Patrick. After the VW chat we had a
great nights sleep and headed out bright and early in the morning. Thank
you, that was right on time. We arrived at Ryan Schuermans just about an
hour before he had to go to work. We did our transaction and loaded up.
Suzanne fixed us a wonderful meal. Lots of Southern breakfast specialties
that we hadn't ever had the opportunity to try before and it was very good.
Suzanne, you can come and cook for us anytime. Thank you. Ryan, the car is
just as you had represented it to me. I have found no surprises yet.
Merrilee even said she liked the car (phew!). When I reported this to our 20
year old daughter Carrie she said, "You know Mom is going to want to drive
it don't you? You are so screwed!". The rest of our trip was uneventful. We
got to see lots of this country of ours that we hadn't seen before and too
damned many fuel pumps.

Here it is late Wednesday night and I still haven't had a tantrum over this.
Damned I must be getting old - there was a day... Merrilee and I celebrated
our thirtieth wedding anniversary on the road and I have come to the
realization that in all those years this is her first wreck. I guess with
that kind of record the odds were stacked against her. Or looking at it
another way, I'm good to go for the next thirty.

What a great list, what wonderful people, if any of you are ever anywhere
near New England I expect, no demand, an opportunity to return the favors.

By the way, the entire list is welcome to call upon me while traveling in my
corner of the world. Just not all at once ok?

THANK YOU!

Rick Alexander