Sorry Bob for firing away at you. Yesterday was the day from hell in everyway. I have a customer that I shipped his parts go sour like milk in the sun. And now I have another starting to today. The worst part is that they were mailed on the same day. This is not good as we mailed about 30 packages the same day.
Last night - I am to deliver a bike in Madison Wisconsin. Not bad as I agreed to deliver the bike to speed the deal along. I am supposed to meet the guy in Madison at 9:30pm so he could pick it up for his kid after the Iowa/Wisconsin wrestling competition. I am about 1 hour on clean roads from Madison.
Here's where things change a bit.
At about 4:30 we start to get snow. Not heavy, but big flakes and substantial. Stubborn me decides to haul the bike no matter what, as I was to pick up another score this morning and needed the funds for it. I start to get ready and clear out the car a bit as the wife is supposed to go with me.
5:00 She gets off work and the weather gets nastier. Radio says the roads in Madison are treacherous. Nothing will keep me from my appointed rounds.
5:30 Already dark.. I have my 18 yr old daughter help me load the KZ440. Good thing to as the ground is so slick one guy could not push a mini bike up the ramp by himself.
6:00 I stop and get a few things, head back to the house for just a second and head out. I make some wrong turns and decide I can climb the hill near my house. I make the turn and 100feet into the climb the front tires spin wildly, I try to stop only now the whole rig is trying to slide down the hill at a rate and direction I cant control. Nail the gas hard, with tires spinning wildy to get traction I crest the center hump of the road. Now the car and trailer while still moving forward only in inches at best, slides for the curb on the opposite side of the street. Just about then, I start to run out of gas. Putpuputputuutt.... Now that I can stand still because the whole rig is against the curb. Now it begins to snow harder. I call my wife and have her bring some gas. Meanwhile the cops show up and ask me a few dumb questions and then move on.
She shows up a few minutes later and I dump the gas in. I figured I had but one chance to get out of the whole thing. I stick her in 2nd wind it up while holding the park brake and dump the clutch and let go of the brake at the same time. Now the wheels spin wicked fast. I think the speedo was reading 70-75 and the tach was screaming knock it off. I could only get inches at a time but after about 4 minutes of beating the ordeal was over. I finally got to the house and then headed out of town, one stop... gas. I hear the wife call out do you have your checkbook ?
, Yes. Do you have checks?, Yes. and I was on my way. I stop and fill up.
I go inside to pay and find out that I do not in fact have any checks
Bewildered and feeling dumb in front of the clerk I call my wife to bring a book of my checks. She said nothing other than I be over in a minute.
I wait about 5 minutes, meanwhile I hear people coming in that just traveled where I need to go say the roads are terrible. The snow picks up its pace. By this time it is now 6:40pm.....
I finally get the whole check and gas thing straight and head out. It was slow going and took over 1 1/2 hours to make a run that normally take me about 55 minutes. Freeway was 35-40MPH at best. Visability? = Crap.
8:55PM I finally arrive to the "pick up" point. I wait for the guy. I get out and take a look at the bike and all seems good. I get back in and wait until about 9:45. I get out and meet them, and then one of them points out that I have a flat ^%$#^@#^&#!!
. I don't let him see me get bent. I say lets just get the bike done and I'll deal with that afterwards.
About 15 minutes later the bike and Money are transfered and they drive off. As I scramble through the ridiculous amount of stuff in the truck I finally get to the spare, I find the jack, and the jack handle WHOOOO HOOOO
.... This was short lived as I could not find the tire tool. With wife on phone as my cell phone battery begins to die, and after about 30 minutes of screwing around trying to find it I attempted to borrow one. It was cool that the guy would even dig his out. But no avail - now back to base one.
By now the snow stopped falling.
I decide to drop her back on the ground and nurse it to a gas station that I can see 4 blocks away and across a 4 lane intersection. I get everything loaded back up and nurse it along. I can tell you 4 lanes is a HUGE intersection when you have cross traffic and a flat. I open the drivers door and hang my head out to keep and eye on my lovely flat. I finally make it to the air pump.
Dump my .50 in the machine grab the air hose and up she goes. I fill her up to 40 PSI. I figured it had to be over a bit as I was not going to pay almost $10 for a lousy can of fix a flat. It seemed to be holding and I could not find anything sticking out. I had to make two exits and I would be in the clear.
I race out and try to make the best of the limited time I will have with the escaping air. I hit the freeway and get on. Now just a few miles to go.... I get off at the exit and go into one of the gas stations there. I go in and get a tire gauge and fix a flat $5 total.
I go out and check the tire pressure. Its down to 20PSI. I decide that I should let out just a little more before using the fix-it-f*cker as I call it. OK now down to 10, add the good stuff. I empty the can in it and all I gained was 5 PSI. OK now I will add air. I hit the button on the air pump, Now free
, that would be good if it worked
. I see another gas station down the road. I figured I made it part of the way with 15 PSI before I can make it again. I get there dump my .50 in the machine and add air. I figure this time I will take it to 40 PSI which will allow for a little leakage as the fix it does it's job. I can hear the tire his just a little afterwards. I jump in and nail the gas and up the ramp I go.
At first I decided that I would check it again in a few miles. After about 10 exits it passed out of mind.... I finally arrive home at about 12:15AM.... Lucky me the roads were better on the return. I get out, gave the tire a curious kick and dismissed it and went inside. I was so tired I no longer cared.
I got up this morning to find that my tire luck had changed for better. The tire was not flat. I was not about to disturb it. I took the money order to the the bank. They told me that there would be a 5 day wait on the availability of funds
. Now my score was slipping away.. I went home told the wife about the whole thing. She agreed to dig just a little in the nest egg to cover the score today. A check for the funds and I was on my way.
Cashed the check, picked up my helper and they day only got better. I never let the crap from one deal bleed onto the next.
