My friend sean and I went out to the Shelby dodge nationals in Detroit and were headed home yesterday. It was an awesome event and I will start another thread about it later. I did win the heads up even at the drag strip with my charger.
Here is the story of the worst road trip of my life:
I just got up and I am still exhausted so I will probably go back to bed in a little while. Here is what I can remember at the moment and I will add to it as my brain start working again.
In the first place we were both a little tired to begin with from only getting a few hours sleep the night before we left. I think we left around 1 PM. Our first incident was my GPS. I checked it in the hotel to make sure it would follow the same route that we used to get there. It was all set but it must have rerouted itself in the parking lot. We start out and the next thing you know we are going 75 south. Luckily I quickly remembered that 75 was closed in Detroit. After a u turn we were headed in the right direction. When we stopped for food in Ohio we noticed that sean’s fender mount on his car dolly broke. We took the fender off and went on our way.
When we reached the split for 90 from 280 I was zoned out and missed the turn to 90. Withing a 1/4 mile, if even that much, I see sean’s truck pull over to the side of the road. I can’t pull over but I see an emergency pull off up the road so I pull in there. Sean calls and says his car just went into neutral as he was driving it. He gets it into 4wd low and makes it to the pull off area. He has AAA with plus with RV which entitles him to 200 miles of towing for his vehicle and trailer. Within 30 to 40 minutes the first truck shows up and radios his boss that the trailer is a tow dolly with a car on it. His boss tells him that AAA only covers camping trailers. His boss said he would have to charge $1000 to tow the dolly and car along with the truck. I guess he thought that we would not have any other choice. We spent the next hour or so calling a bunch of other companies until we found one that was interested in looking into towing us. The company calls AAA but the first company blew us in and informed AAA that we had a car dolly and not a camper. Sean’s car that he was towing did not run so he could not even drive it. Even if he could we still had his tow dolly. We decided to pull my car off my tow dolly. We took my tow dolly apart and put it in the bed of the truck. I hooked my truck up to sean’s dolly and was going to tow his car. Sean was going to drive my charger and AAA was going to tow seans truck 200 miles to the Angola rest area on the NYS thruway. So about 3 or so hours of breaking down the Tow truck driver shows up and it starts raining on us. He was dicking around for about 40 minutes and we were soaked by the time we left. I did not care since we actually were back on the road again. When we stopped for gas we noticed that the other fend on the dolly was loose. We had to tighten up some hard to reach bolts and do some bending. Of course it starts to rain again while we are doing this. We make it to the rest sto ahead of the tow truck driver. I call AAA for my 100 mile tow so we can get sean’s truck the rest of the way home. The tow truck stops finally gets there and then a state trooper shows up. He starts hassling the driver while he is trying to unload the truck. We go over to explain what is going on and then they start hassling us. It starts raining again. I finally get it through his pompous a$$ that Every vehicle, except the tow truck will be leaving the thruway exactly in the same configuration as we entered it. They leave and the driver starts to unload the truck. My driver shows up when sean’s driver is almost done. He is a big guy and looks really pissed. He said what you are doing is illegal. I thought he was talking about the AAA stuff. He thought that the other driver was picking up the tow not dropping us off. Once he found that out he was great. We give him directions and he heads out as well as us.
Right after we make it to buffalo sean calls and says he smells tire smoke. I star to pull over and the I hear a loud explosion and bunch of noise. Somehow I manage to keep the truck under control and not SH!t my pants while I pull over to the side of the road. It starts raining again too. We put the spare on and rip the fender off.
We finally make it to Rochester and even after two Monster drinks I am really fatigued. I get confused when the road splits for 590 and I miss the exit. So I pull off and turn around We finally make it to work which is where we are planning to leave sean’s truck and car. It starts raining again. As the tow truck is dumping sean’s truck I am trying to unhook the dolly from my truck. I only chocked one of the car’s tires and we were turned a little. As soon as we get the hitch up it snaps to the side. Amazingly we did not get hurt and nothing got damaged. The driver said he was over on mileage but was able to take care of it.
I am headed home finally! When I get there I need to swap the cars in the driveway so My wife can take the srt to work and I can unpack the Vue. I was so exhausted I had a hard time moving the cars around and it started to rain again.
I finally made it to bed around 5 AM.
They only good thing is that we had two other people following us. They were not going to take 90 so had I made the 90 exit we would have not had help. One guy ended up staying for 3 hours and refused to leave until he was sure we were all set. We also had about 20 other people from the event pull over and help. They gave us food, water, and offered to help in any way possible. They called and checked our progress along the way.
