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Moab 2005
Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Day - 1
What an adventure, and we’ve only just begun. The day started out with Joe and I meeting up at Joe’s house at 4 am for an early traffic free get out of town. Simultaneously, in Indian Wes, Margaret Taylor, John Stowe, and Jennifer were all doing the same thing. They were taking the South Route (I-85), and we were taking the North route (I-40) to Asheville. We passed the exit to the Biltmore Estate, and I decided to call John to see where the crew was at. They had made an unscheduled stop off the very exit that we had just passed. They were returning to I-40 after changing a flat tire they had since Lincolnton. They had no idea that the tire had been flat. A passer-by alerted them to the fact.
Joe and I were now in the lead, with John and his posse not far behind. About 45 miles later we came to a curve and Joe had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a massive traffic stoppage. When we finally came to a stop, and after getting out of the truck, still on I-40, we found out that two tanker trucks had collided, blocking both lanes. All of their precious fuel dumped on the highway. After an hour and a half of cleanup we were on our way again, but we still had the damaged class 5 hitch of John’s to take care of.
About four miles after we were under way, we stopped at a rest area and took off the hitch to give Wes a shot at using his on-board welder. First time it’s been used on a highway fix. Unfortunately, the welds didn’t hold, and we stopped about forty miles later in the town of Newport in search of a new hitch. While we didn’t procure a new hitch, we did run across a machine shop that had an excellent welder/fabricator named William Lancaster who owned Stanberry Machine shop, and he and his assistants took the time to do a proper fix to the hitch at a more than reasonable price. Sorry John, the hitch goes with the truck if you ever sell it.
Ah yes, back out on the open road. I was fast asleep getting ready for my driving stint. The crew in front pulled off an exit about 10 minutes down the road to check their straps. Unbeknownst to me, we had to play catch up because when we had pulled off the exit behind John, the cab of Joe’s new Dodge 2500 was so comfortable that the driver himself had fallen asleep No harm, no foul; we were caught up in no time We had about 2 hours of trouble free motoring before the flat tire gremlin struck again. By now, we have that procedure down to a science. Tire changed and back on the road, we got about an hour down the road and about 200 miles still yet away from Memphis, home of the King, when as Wes was motoring down the highway he lost fifth gear. We pulled over to a rest area, and made arrangements to take it to a Dodge dealer in Jackson, Tennessee first thing the next morning (DOH!!! Gotta go for a second, we just blew our first tire.) Okay, I’m back. Where were we? Ah yes, the puppet making incident. After we got check in to the hotel and had a few well-deserved cold beverages, Wes, Margaret, and Taylor were off to bed, or so they thought. Due to a backup in the water system, they had to switch rooms.
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