Operation Heavy Barrel Rescue
After reading about Harmonicaman's Heavy Barrel cabinet for sale in Austin, TX, I decided a road trip was in order. "Operation Heavy Barrel Rescue", the trip was dubbed, and the date was set for Saturday, October 11th.
I tend to over simplify, as far as plans are concerned. The whole mission seemed pretty simple on the surface. Pulling my dad's flat bed trailer, I would stop half way in Dallas (to pick up a friend of mine), continue on to Austin, pick up the game, turn around, drive back to Dallas and drop my friend off, and then come home. Using Mapquest, I roughly estimated that each leg of the tour would be three hours long. That's 3 hours from here to Dallas, 3 hours from there to Austin, 3 hours back to Dallas and 3 hours back home. Assuming I left at 6am, that would put me in Austin around noon. Giving a small allowance for lunch, I figured I would be back home between 6pm and 7pm.
Ha.
[BAD PLANNING ALERT! BAD PLANNING ALERT!]
The trip for me actually began Friday, when I had a trailer hitch installed on my Isuzu Rodeo. U-Haul had to special order the hitch and ended up pushing the installation back a day, making me worry about them getting it done in time. I don't know anything about trailers, but my dad did tell me to tell them that his trailer has a GM Electrical Adapter. I told the guy at U-Haul that at least twice. $200 later, I left U-Haul to go pick up the trailer. Of course, the two electrical adapters are totally different, and won't connect at all. I then call U-Haul, but ho ho, it's after 5pm and they've gone home. So then I drive the trailer to AutoZone (big plug!) who, after looking at my situation for 30 seconds, popped the ADAPTER off my dad's trailer and what do you know, it plugged right up. Cost spent at AutoZone, $0. The guy wouldn't even let me buy him a Coke.
I drove the now installed trailer back to my house and went to bed to get a good night's sleep. The worst was behind me, right?
[BAD PLANNING ALERT! BAD PLANNING ALERT!]
I got up Saturday morning around 6:10am. D'oh -- was supposed to leave ten minutes before that. I throw on some clothes, and see I have voice mail from my dad. "Hey, do you have any ropes? I left some in the back of my truck if you need some, but you probably already thought of that. Talk to you when you get back!" D'oh. ROPES. Why didn't I think of that? So, after a detour to pick up ropes, a stop for doughnuts and a morning Dr. Pepper, I was on my way. It was 7am.
Turns out, when you're pulling a 16 foot trailer, you tend to go slower. Instead of 80+, I was doing a pretty steady 65mph. That turned a 3:15 hour trip to Dallas into a solid 4 hours. I was supposed to give my friend a wake up call at 8am -- he called me at 10am, wondering where I was! I pulled in right at 11am, and we quickly headed out for Austin. We'll make up the time on the road.
[BAD PLANNING ALERT! BAD PLANNING ALERT!]
Ok, so it turns out Saturday was OU/Texas weekend at the Cottonbowl. For those not in the know, this is the weekend that OU plays Texas. Thousands and thousands of people drive to the game. Guess what this does to Dallas traffic? It took us over an hour and a half to go 2 miles at one point. We finally got off the interstate and re-routed the trip through Ft. Worth, over a half hour away. When we finally got back on I-35 south, it was 1pm -- an hour later than we had planned on being in Austin. We still had three hours to go.
[BAD PLANNING ALERT! BAD PLANNING ALERT!]
Using my GPS, we zoned in on Harmonicaman's house in Austin. When we were about 30 minutes away, it began sprinkling. Hadn't planned on that. By the time we got to his house, we were standing in a serious down pour. After showing up and introducing ourselves, we turned right back around and backtracked to Lowe's, where we picked up two of those blue tarps. This took a little longer than expected because I am really hard headed and I expected both convenient stores and Hobby Lobby to carry tarps (which they didn't, but I wouldn't believe my friend). After making it to Lowe's and getting the tarps, it was back to Harmonicaman's, where we dollied the game out to the trailer and, after some serious 3 Stooges-style maneuvering, got the cabinet up on the trailer and laid down. We wrapped the baby up in the tarps, pretended like we knew what we were doing with the ropes, and tied 'er down the best we could in the middle of the heavy rain.
Heading back out on 183, we eventually ran across a Cici's Pizza. It was around that point that we realized we had kind of forgotten to eat lunch, so tack on another half hour at the pizza buffet. We also noticed that with our tarps and ropes we had created almost the perfect wind tunnel. I couldn't even see out of my back window due to the tarps blowing so high. So, after more fiddling with the ropes and tarps, we redid everything (again, in the rain). Then we got back on the road. It was 6pm. Wasn't I supposed to be home already?
The minute we got on the interstate, the tarp situation went to Hell again. So we pulled over (again) and redid the tarps (again) in the rain (still). I was even more cautious while driving the trailer with the cabinet on it, so I made it to Dallas around 10pm. After getting some gas, resetting the GPS and grabbing some sunflower seeds and another Dr. Pepper, I hit the road for the final leg of the tour. This was probably the worst part of the trip. Driving alone, in the rain, at night. With the radio cranked and the window cracked, somehow I managed to stay awake the rest of the drive home.
I pulled in the driveway at 2:30am, 22 1/2 hours after I had left. The game stayed on the trailer (I looked, it's still there). You know you're getting old when you're sore and stiff from just DRIVING. My feet, knees, hips, back, and arms all hurt. Heavy Barrel may live on the trailer for another day, haha.
Anyway, despite some pretty bad planning, I did make it home with my game. Special thanks to Harmonicaman for waiting around for us for so long.
Flack
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