Friday, March 09, 2007
Where does it all go?
And it seems I've missed another two months here. Yikes. I can't stay ahead of this thing we call time.
Well, let's see. Our trailer is stuck firmly in the yard. We tried to take it out for Family Day long weekend, and sure enough, we got stuck in the alley. First off, the brake stop pulled loose, instantly applying the trailer brakes when we were trying to tow it out, bringing everything to a dead halt. Once we rectified that, it seems that the alley was pretty slippery, and the Suburban managed to jackknife at such an angle making extraction of the trailer impossible. Mission time: 30 minutes.
We then hooked the trailer up to the poor Jeep, thinking that since it was a shorter vehicle, we'd get the clearance we needed to get it past the fence, but no go. The Jeep's hitch is lower-down, and all we accomplished was to drag the entire hitch assembly into the alley's mud and ice. Mission time: 1 hour.
We then decided to take a different approach. We took down the fence to the green space behind the house, and fit the Jeep in to angle the trailer back, only to discover that the Jeep isn't quite strong enough to move the payload of nearly 10,000 lbs. So? We decided to hook the Suburban up to it through the green space fence.
Only, see... the Suburban is wider than the Jeep in addition to being longer. And that meant it didn't really fit between the fenceposts to the green space. So one of them had to come down, and Rob got out the new chainsaw he got for Christmas, and it was down in a jif!! Whoo!! However, all we could manage, still, was to get the trailer back into the yard. Mission time: 2 hours.
We tried a second time to get the trailer out of the yard using all the clearance we could between the yard and the now-down green space fence. Again, the Suburban jackknifed and we just couldn't get the traction or the clearance we needed. Mission time: 3 hours.
We gave up, but then had to reinstall the green space fence, which we did using a couple of pieces of rebar, making the fence-post into a breakaway post in case we need to do this again for fun or profit in the future. Mission time: 3 hours, 45 minutes.
After all of that, we decided not to go. It turned out to be a good decision, because just last weekend, we went out to the area where we would have camped and promptly got the Suburban stuck in the snow. I suspect something similar would have happened with the trailer, only it would have been a lot harder to dig out with all that weight. After getting stuck last weekend, it was a quick trip by ski to the shed at the camping area nearby to get a shovel and a rake to dig out our vehicle, so we had quite an enjoyable afternoon, after the work of trying to get the car out of the damn snow.
Everyone is well at home - the cats and the dogs are all fine. Millie isn't quite as smart as we thought, it seems, since in February, she managed to gouge a deep gash in her back running underneath the trailer. Honestly, she was outside for about five minutes after I came home one afternoon, and when she came back inside, she had a huge cut in her back. I had her in to the vet not ten minutes later to get stitched up, and four stitches, $90 and fifteen minutes after that, we were home again. She is pure mischief. She had to wear her jacket for a week to keep her from picking at the stitches. It was pretty funny when she was running around rubbing up against everything in an attempt to scratch away the itchiness...
Work is still pretty grim. I'm trying to finish my license so I can open the world of options. I've been seriously considering going on my own, here, since all the property management companies I know of are pretty crappy. Hopefully, I can pull it all together and get something going over the next few months.
Wedding plans are still stalled - no time for planning. Hey, I can't even update my blog more than once every couple of months, so let's not go overboard trying to plan a full-scale event!!
That's all for now...
Well, let's see. Our trailer is stuck firmly in the yard. We tried to take it out for Family Day long weekend, and sure enough, we got stuck in the alley. First off, the brake stop pulled loose, instantly applying the trailer brakes when we were trying to tow it out, bringing everything to a dead halt. Once we rectified that, it seems that the alley was pretty slippery, and the Suburban managed to jackknife at such an angle making extraction of the trailer impossible. Mission time: 30 minutes.
We then hooked the trailer up to the poor Jeep, thinking that since it was a shorter vehicle, we'd get the clearance we needed to get it past the fence, but no go. The Jeep's hitch is lower-down, and all we accomplished was to drag the entire hitch assembly into the alley's mud and ice. Mission time: 1 hour.
We then decided to take a different approach. We took down the fence to the green space behind the house, and fit the Jeep in to angle the trailer back, only to discover that the Jeep isn't quite strong enough to move the payload of nearly 10,000 lbs. So? We decided to hook the Suburban up to it through the green space fence.
Only, see... the Suburban is wider than the Jeep in addition to being longer. And that meant it didn't really fit between the fenceposts to the green space. So one of them had to come down, and Rob got out the new chainsaw he got for Christmas, and it was down in a jif!! Whoo!! However, all we could manage, still, was to get the trailer back into the yard. Mission time: 2 hours.
We tried a second time to get the trailer out of the yard using all the clearance we could between the yard and the now-down green space fence. Again, the Suburban jackknifed and we just couldn't get the traction or the clearance we needed. Mission time: 3 hours.
We gave up, but then had to reinstall the green space fence, which we did using a couple of pieces of rebar, making the fence-post into a breakaway post in case we need to do this again for fun or profit in the future. Mission time: 3 hours, 45 minutes.
After all of that, we decided not to go. It turned out to be a good decision, because just last weekend, we went out to the area where we would have camped and promptly got the Suburban stuck in the snow. I suspect something similar would have happened with the trailer, only it would have been a lot harder to dig out with all that weight. After getting stuck last weekend, it was a quick trip by ski to the shed at the camping area nearby to get a shovel and a rake to dig out our vehicle, so we had quite an enjoyable afternoon, after the work of trying to get the car out of the damn snow.
Everyone is well at home - the cats and the dogs are all fine. Millie isn't quite as smart as we thought, it seems, since in February, she managed to gouge a deep gash in her back running underneath the trailer. Honestly, she was outside for about five minutes after I came home one afternoon, and when she came back inside, she had a huge cut in her back. I had her in to the vet not ten minutes later to get stitched up, and four stitches, $90 and fifteen minutes after that, we were home again. She is pure mischief. She had to wear her jacket for a week to keep her from picking at the stitches. It was pretty funny when she was running around rubbing up against everything in an attempt to scratch away the itchiness...
Work is still pretty grim. I'm trying to finish my license so I can open the world of options. I've been seriously considering going on my own, here, since all the property management companies I know of are pretty crappy. Hopefully, I can pull it all together and get something going over the next few months.
Wedding plans are still stalled - no time for planning. Hey, I can't even update my blog more than once every couple of months, so let's not go overboard trying to plan a full-scale event!!
That's all for now...
