Date night....or not.

Saturday was one of the longest days of my life.

John and I planned on a date night Saturday night...which it always seems that when we purposely make time for a date, something tries to ruin our plans.

John asked me to come help him with one of his jobs in Chapel Hill, and told me it would take about 3 hrs. So Saturday morning at about 9am we start off the day. We had to make a little detour to drop off his trailer and pick up my father-in-law's trailer to haul some debris from the job site, which all this is in Buies Creek.

10:30am-We get to Chapel Hill and do our work. The work was as expected, around 3 hrs worth, and we head out of there around 1:30.

On our way back, we stop for a few drinks and gas, everything looking like we're going to make it back for a nice dinner, maybe a movie, and I might even get a little cleaning done before we head out for our date.

Boy, was I wrong.

2pm-As we're driving through Pittsboro on 64, the trailer blows a tire. And I mean, this trailer shred the tire, like a 18-wheeler truck tire...the entire tire came apart, tread and all. Seriously worst flat tire I have ever had.

So, we get out, check the tire to try to read what we're supposed to get, measure the bolt spacing, all that necessary stuff, and un-hook the trailer from the truck to go to a store.

Only problem, is Pittsboro is in the sticks. So, no one is open on a Saturday. We call one place and they say they don't even carry trailer tires but that we should call Lowe's, as they are the only place that might possibly have a tire. So we call, they say they have "some" trailer tires, so off we go.

2:30pm-We get to Lowe's and start looking. The tires on the trailer are 14" tires, the only ones Lowe's has is 13" and 15". After much deliberation and finally just a leap of I'm-tired-lets-get-of-here decision making we go with the 13" tires. We also measure the rims here, as Lowe's only sells the entire wheel, with tire and rim and all, and we have to make sure this fits. And back out to the side of the Hwy we go.

3:00pm-We are back on the side of 64, taking off the bum tire, and line up the new tire, and what do you think happens? The rims don't line up properly. We measure again, everything is measuring like this should be perfect. Ok, try again...nope sorry, not going on.

So John gets this seriously genius idea, and gets out his drill and bores out the holes to widen a few of them to help make the bolts fit. Only problem...the battery on the drill dies. Seriously.

We are both getting pretty upset at this point. The rims are now closer to fitting properly..just not quite there to put the lugs on the bolts and keep this tire on.

We start calling John's family to figure out what is the best thing to do, I start calling my dad who used to sell trailers and knows all about this type problem.

My dad tells me "oh aren't trailer companies smart" and tells me that in order to keep the prices of trailers low, the companies buy the cheapest parts sometimes. Which also means that this rim which is "standard" will not fit on our non-standard trailer. This only upsets us more, because now we know that we were doing correctly and measured everything right, nothing should be happening like this.

John starts hammering the bolts to make them fit into the holes.

4:30pm - FINALLY!!! The tire makes it on the trailer. Now, we're missing a lug. Started off with 5, have 4, and one is somehow stripped and wont tighten, so we're really down to 3 working lugs. Not good for a tire that already has had some pressure put on it with the hammering and drilling. We drive half a mile down the road, and after watching the new tire wiggle and wobble, decide to take a lug from the "good" tire (if you can say that) and put it on the new tire side. This seems to help put the tire on tighter and down the road we go.

5:15pm We finally get to my father-in-laws. By this time, date night has turned into a veg night.

John starts to change over his trailer and realizes that since cleaning up the Chapel hill site, now has more tools than fit in his truck and trailer. So what does that mean? It means Now we have to organize his trailer to fit all the stuff in.

Seriously.

So, we organize his trailer. and I remind him that I have a Rx that we need to pick up in Garner, and that CVS closes probably at 9 or 10. It is 8:00 now and date night is completely cancelled, with a promise to reschedule when we are not as stressed and tired.

8:50pm-We make it to CVS to find out that the pharmacy in CVS is closed. and closed at 6pm. Oh we can buy anything in CVS...just not what we rushed over there to get.

9:20pm-We make it home, we're both ticked and tired and completely wishing that this day was over about 8 hrs before.



I'm still exhausted from Saturday. I need a recovery day from the weekend.


There are just a few things that I am glad about on Saturday:

1-I had the genius idea of hooking the trailer up to the truck before changing the tire. Think few/several hundred pounds all balancing on one tire and a jack....could spell serious issues for 64.

2-We put that extra lug on the bad tire side to help with the wobbling. Seriously saw a premonition of the trailer breaking an axel, causing us to end up in the ditch, possibly flipping over, and some serious injuries.

3-As a result of #2-Thank God for watching over us. I just felt this urgent need to pray for us for our safety.





Thank you God, for being there to keep us safe when we were obviously tired, stressed, seriously ticked-off driving an un-safe trailer.