Amazing Fetes of Driving

In the country there are a LOT of trailers.  People here have all kinds of trailers (stock trailers, horse trailers, travel trailers, utility trailers, tilt bed trailers, trailers for toys and trailers for tools) and drive them around like it is no big deal to drive through town with a trailer trailing behind them.  They not only drive them, but they park them!  If you are not impressed, then you’ve never driven a trailer and you’ve never ever tried to park a trailer, because here is the thing…in reverse they do not go the right way, they go the other way, backwards to the way you are going!

One of my new girlfriends can drive their horse trailer….forward.  We are going to go on a trail ride someday, we just have to make sure we do not have to back up.  I am very impressed with her.

We’ve acquired a few trailers for a few reasons.  Occasionally, My Loving Spouse will say something like,

“We should go down to that empty parking lot, so you can get comfortable driving the trailer.”  (The oxymoron is in red!)

Now like all good wives, I might maybe sometimes remind (gently) My Loving Spouse of stuff that we need to get done, I can assure you trailer driving practice has never been on the list.

Unfortunately for me, there was the day we rented some big-ol (real word derived from big and old) piece of equipment and it came on a trailer and had to be returned at 9:00 am in the morning.  My Loving Spouse went to work at 8:00 and the equipment place did not exactly want to open an hour early, sheesh, so I had to return it.  I dressed very carefully and had a plan.  I’d drive a route that had the least amount of turns and just park it on the street outside the rental place even if that meant that it was double parked, then let one of ‘them’ (a real trailer driver) come and park it.  All went well,  I didn’t knock out any of our fence posts on the way out or side swipe any cars on the way in and I made it to my pre-planned landing spot.  Then I saw where they were waving stuff into their yard and thought, maybe I could do that and so I did.  It was a beautiful thing.  I’d driven that big-ol trailer and all was well.  I was done.

However, then the equipment Rental Dude said, “Oh pull it around a little bit.” So, I tried and it went twunk into another thing and I said a Bad British Word and then the Rental Dude said, “Okay…back up.”  It was then that I jumped out of the truck a lot flustered.

“I can’t even drive this thing!  I’m wearing pink and purple, so you’d know I cannot back up!  How much do we owe you for the dent?  But I cannot drive this trailer….”  It went pretty much like that, as I was wishing I stuck to my original plan of leaving it out on the road.  They banged out the small dent and that trailer is still rental-able and they do still rent it out…just not to me.

With My Loving Spouse in the hospital, I had to drive one of our trailers.  I got to where we were going and home again, but that is when we ran into trouble….parking it and backing it up.  It seems that if I had maybe enough room (something akin to a football field), I could probably do it.  However, I had to get it between stuff.  It only took two days.  Day one with Number Two Son’s help, I almost ran it into his car, so I quit for the day knowing I had 3 options the following morning:

1.  Leave it where it was for the next 3 weeks

2.  Get the Fire Captain neighbor to park it

3.  Try it again….so get ready to be amazed, because I am pretty proud of this picture.

Here it is again, notice that the stock trailer on the left has no new scratches and the fence on the right is still standing, for which you’ll have to take my word about.

PS:  In case you think this looks easy…there is a Rental Dude in town that will rent you a big-ol trailer to practice on, just don’t mention my name.