The One Where They Bring the Trailer Home (Annie)

Roxi said, "If you don't blog about this, I'm gonna!" So here goes.

So we picked up The Duck on Saturday as planned, though we got to Fletcher's about an hour later than scheduled, arriving at 11am. We thought we were just going to pay and hitch up and go but Bill spent a lot of time showing us things he did, giving us tutorials on the mechanicals, and talking about the things we still want to have done. It was probably 12:30 by the time we pulled out of there.

I was pretty cool on the way home but as we got to the village limit my nervousness cranked up a couple of notches. Have I mentioned I'd never backed the trailer before? Uh huh. And it wasn't just backing it up, it was backing it up past 90º, between a tree and mailbox and into the side yard. Having now lived through the experience I can say it was kind of hard. A little bit hard. I swore. Like a sailor. Taking advanced swearing lessons.

Roxi thinks it took about six tries at pulling forward and lining up again before I got the tail where it needed to be but from where I was sitting it felt like a dozen or more. Mostly because at that time of day on a Saturday there's a buttload of traffic on our street, so I'd start to back up then would have to wait for people to pass, all the while afraid I'd never get that behemoth into our yard but would have to haul it over to our friends' place instead (Hi Carolyn and Annie!) where the yard is plentiful and the angles easy. But once the tail end was heading in the right direction and I figured out that I needed to do a lot of back and forth finessing to get it in, we were golden. Actually, if I had figured that out earlier, I would have gotten it in on maybe the second try, as the trailer was headed perfectly but I hit that jackknife position and didn't think to just pull forward enough to straighten out the truck and go back again. That's the ticket right there.

I don't know how long it took to finish parking it but as soon as it was done, I jumped out of the truck and Roxi said, "It'll never be that hard again." that's what she said

And then I hit my head and got a concussion. The end.


OK, OK, take it easy, I'll explain. We had the trailer mostly leveled and unhitched from the truck but I decided I wanted to raise the front end of the trailer just a touch more to level it better since, you know, it was only mostly level and perfectly fine as it was. But no, I had to make it better. Since Bill just fixed our wonderful switch to automatically raise and lower the trailer arms, I hooked the power connection back up to the truck and raised the trailer. It's a beautiful thing having that power arms dealio. I love it. When the deed was done, I uncoupled the power cables - and this is where it gets painful - and misjudged how close I was to the overhang of the trailer. I stood up, moved to my right and slammed the right side of my head into the corner of the overhang. Right on my ear. I thought I'd taken the ear off at first. Lots of pain and stars and little birdies tweeting around my head. I rang that bell like a senior signaling the close of the last school day. That is to say hard.

We finished up making sure all was well with the trailer - you'll be happy to know my head did not damage it in the least. Then I went inside for some ice and a nice sit down. A short while later, I said to Roxi, "I hate to say this but..." and she was all, "OK! We're going!" It was off to the hospital with my dizzy, nauseous, sleepy self. A CT scan and a couple of nice prescriptions later, I've got an official concussion diagnosis and a really sore arm from the Tetanus shot someone insisted I get since I also cut my ear on the trailer.

All in all, I'd say the day was a great success. The trailer's in the yard! Yay!