Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men.....

We decided to move our 5th wheel out to the farm this week.....

and what a week it's been!

My brother graciously agreed to do the hauling,

as we don't own a vehicle that has enough horse-power

to do the job ourselves and he has a one-ton dually truck.

The-Man-of-the-Place and my brother spent two days

getting the truck road-ready,

which included attaching the 5th-wheel hitch to the bed of the truck,

and then rebuilding the brakes as they were shot.

We had planned to load up and leave about noon on Thursday,

and they finally arrived at our home around 3 pm.

They pulled the one-ton truck into our gravel drive

and zipped into the yard to turn around for the hook up.....

and the truck promptly sunk to its rear axles!

(9 inches of rain in the last week...DUH!!...wonder how that happened?!)

They hooked a tow strap to our "Old Blue" 1/2 ton pick-up, and started jerking.

Had to keep the pickup on the gravel drive, for fear it would sink too,

which meant they had to jerk the one-ton around 45 degrees to get it out.

Took some time and terrible revving of engines and banging noises,

but they succeeded.

So we all looked at each other and said,

"..............., What do we do now?"

When we bought the trailer, we had them park it off the gravel drive

 so we could have access to the back part of the property.....

during the heat of summer when the ground was dry and hard.

There was no way we could get the one-ton backed up under it

without sinking it to the axles again,

and we weren't sure we could even get the 5th wheel out either.

We kind of gave up the idea of moving it until dry-er weather.

But as we were sitting around commiserating,

someone had the bright idea of maybe a neighbor had a tractor with a bucket?

So off went the Man on a mission.

Before too long, here came Neighbor M with a backhoe and bucket!

They decided that if they could hook the bucket to the 5th wheel,

they could lift it up enough to pull and ease it over onto the gravel drive.

Great idea! And it almost worked.....but when he went to back up,

the weight of the 5th wheel sunk the front wheels into the soggy mush.....

so, they unhooked, backed up, repositioned.....

planked under the wheels.....

and tried again.

Inch by inch, Neighbor M eased the big old beast

over onto the gravel drive.....

although at one point he had to stop and extend the back-hoe bucket

as far as it would go in order to balance the weight

to give the back wheels better traction.

Finally----success!!!

They blocked the 5th wheel up with its own front jacks,

and backed the one-ton under it ...had it in good position...

but the hitch bumped the trailer and it rolled backwards off the plate

and fell off. (forgot to scotch the trailer's wheels...)

BIG BUMP!!!

(Broke the jacks on the 5th wheel as well.)

 

Which brought me to the question...

At what point do you say, "The Lord must not want us to move this thing today(!)"

versus, "The Lord must be having a lot of fun teaching the lessons of perserverence(?)"

Fortunately, I'm the help-meet in this family,

and I know my place!

(doesn't mean I always stay there, but I'm learning...)

so all I had to do was pray, then ask my Man--

"What do we do next? Are we staying or going?"

The answer was always, "Keep going."

So they re-enlisted Neighbor M and his bucket-machine,

and tried to lift the 5th wheel with it.

No luck.

Finally, they went to Neighbor M's and borrowed his hydraulic floor jack,

placed it on the bed of the one-ton and lifted the 5th wheel back into place.

This time they scotched the wheels and were able to back under the trailer again

and had the Man in place to lock the manual pin.

Finally---success!!

By now, it is 10:00 pm, with mist and light fog.

Once again the Man said, "We're going."

And so we did.

The man and my brother drove the one-ton,

the Treasure and I drove "Old Blue" behind them.

It was a trip of full of adventure, but this is enough for one post.

We arrived at the farm around 9:00 am the next morning (Friday)...

Parked the 5th wheel and we crashed.

It's done.

I'm beat.