Rally Recovery

I debated weather this post should go on my business blog or here on my personal blog. Since no money changed hands, I have chosen to keep it personal. So what do you do when all your pre Bash duties are under control? You go deep into the woods and recover a trailer.

Sorry, blurry photo coming your way. It is however, key to telling the story. Rob found this trailer way out in the sticks. Off a country road we made a right, then a left, and another left deep into the hemlock forest. Dude, this was way the hell out there. How Rob spotted this trailer I have no idea. He found the owner and got it for free. He, like I would have, took a pass. My BFF, Steve Klohn(his kids say that, I do not use such 'generation WTF' terms) has wanted a Scotty of this same model and years for a while now. He jumped all over a free trailer. When I saw this wheel buried so deep in the ground, I wanted to just fire up the diesel and roll.

There really are wheels under there. This 1965 Scotty had been sitting in the woods a very long time. The freshest date we found was 1982 on an old reciept. Trees were growing all around it and part of the deal was NO TREES CAN BE DISTURBED. The trailer was about 25 feet from the road and about 6 feet below road grade. There was another very serious hinderance. I will get to that soon. I really wanted to roll out and call it a loss. Sorry Steve, your my BFF but you, my man, are out of luck. Ace Goldberg was there though and Ace could see it happening. He hooked a chain on to the tongue and with only four position changes and re hooking we had it on the edge of the road.

The roof had a very thick coating of hemlock duff covering the roof. There were 3 foot tall hemlocks growing in the duff. This was not the hindrance though. The damn thing had a hitch lock on it. How could we hook on with a hitch lock on it. No key could be found while searching through the myriad of mouse nests in every drawer and cupboard. After about 45 minutes we managed to hack saw it off.

Not sure if it visited these locations, but it sure could have.

In the seventies the CB did keep America truckin. Now every truck has global positioning and cell phones. CB's are a thing of the past or Wally Byam Control at an International rally for their club. Not much call for this dated technology.

Good old Good Sam's Club. I had to wonder if they might come out and assist us. I was actually more worried the State Police or local Sheriff was about to show up to find out what we were doing dragging this trailer out of the dark woods of Central New York using a truck tagged in Maryland. Fortunately they never showed up.

So we jacked her up and using my super human strength, I broke the lugs free. Street side changed to tires made in the last forty years.

Then the curb side was taken care of. Scotty wheels are very hard to get in there. The clearance between the wheel well and tire was none existent. These suckers are very hard to change. But determination and the three of us saying "get out of my way, let me do it..." over and over, we finally got it in there. I just kept waiting for the State Police to show up. We hit the road as quick as we could, and never saw the police.

First stop was the car wash. Once again, I was nervous that the owner might show up. "No sir that is not a four foot tree laying on the ground, No sir, that dirt was the last guy..." Fortunately no one at all came by. It only took $5 in quarters to clean the car wash up. After a fast bath the old girl actually looked pretty nice. She will take an extensive restoration, but all in all she held up well in the deep dark hemlock forest. The interior, though mouse urine soaked and moldy, is all original. Not bad for free.