It’s not as easy as it looks…

This is just a little blog entry, but I could probably write a book on this topic!  Some day, I’ll put up the story of what it took to get this business off the ground – LOTS of blood, sweat, and tears!

But I do like to chronicle my E-Type road trips, and the most recent trip I took to pick up the maroon S2 OTS shell a few blogs down was another real adventure…

I did my first towing in life on the way to Hershey in 1994 – my dad and I went up there with the usual “hershey trailer” – a 14-foot, two-man, 1969 Shasta travel trailer – complete with the little wings on the back.  We always towed this with my father’s ’87 Chevy C-30 3/4-ton mechanics body truck, and he of course always drove it.  Well, this year, we also took up his 1962? Mack B-67 Diesel roll-back conversion, and while I had driven it around the block just for kicks a few times, he drove that in 1994, and had to tow the trailer…

It probably wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for the fact that Routes 30 and 283 around Lancaster were under construction FOREVER back then, and here I am all of the sudden “threading the needle” through a cattle-chute of Jersey barriers about 9 feet wide!  Nothing like trial by fire!

Since Monocoque Metalworks, I’ve logged tens of thousands of miles with a trailer all over the Eastern half of the US, and never had an issue.  I drive carefully with a trailer, and take extra precautions, and I’m a pretty good driver anyway (E-Types don’t count – I have a BAD track record there of 1-car accidents!)  Then came the trip to get that OTS body…

I had already pushed the trip back a day because of a snowstorm, and when I got up on Wednesday, it was a real Winter Wonderland!  The roads were clear, though, so off I went.  And it was no problem, as the highway was BONE DRY for every foot of the trip – EXCEPT about 200 of those feet on 340 West just outside of Harper’s Ferry – and that’s where I lost control of the truck AND the trailer, at about 65 MPH.

I was driving along a bone dry, dead straight, mostly flat highway, just as the sun was coming up, and the countryside was beautiful and covered with a fresh blanket of about 6 inches of snow.  Now, I can’t over-stress how perfect the road conditions were – I might as well have been driving down a highway in New Mexico…  I had been on the road for about 3 hours already, and had been back in the truck for about 1/2 an hour after stopping for breakfast.  Suddenly, I remembered that I had bought a new cup of coffee.

I picked up the coffee, opened the lid, and took a sip – which I have done approx. 20 million times…  But just as the coffee hit my lips and my brain was concentrating on measuring how hot it would be, we were cresting a long slow hill, and then I felt the rear of the truck kick out from under me.  I don’t know – I guess MAYBE I took my eyes off the road for a split second – all I know is that what had been hundreds of miles of straight black ribbon, was now SOLID WHITE, and the truck was sideways.

I’ve been REALLY good throughout my life by avoiding many accidents by NOT slamming on the brakes in a panic, but in this case, my brain quickly decided that the ONLY option here was to start scrubbing off speed FAST – and into the grass median I went at full speed.

What followed next was about 10 seconds of total mayhem while I desperately tried to keep the whole rig in the median, and out of the oncoming lanes.  Luckily, the median was very wide, and there were only two cars coming the other way, and they were spread out and far enough back to not cause a real problem had it come to that.

In recreating the whole scene, I believe what happened is that as soon as my front wheels finally hit the pavement of the oncoming lanes, I got my steering back, and the whole rig shot back towards the other side, and eventually came to rest about 75 feet shy of the pavement I had left in the first place.  Now, AS SOON AS IT STOPPED, I kind of hunched up over the wheel and instinctively braced for the impact of the trailer, which I was sure was coming, because I didn’t know WHERE it was – I just knew it wasn’t hooked to the truck anymore!  Well, it was – it was right back there like nothing every happened…

The good news is that I didn’t get hurt – and neither did the truck or the trailer.  A Highway Patrol car showed up about 15 minutes later, and brought a wrecker who winched me out, AND a snowplow who cleared the patch of packed snow that had caused all the trouble.  And soon I was back on my way!  The funny thing is, I never even got scared – I was too busy trying to avoid a total disaster.  But let me tell you, if I would have had a passenger with me, they would surely have died of fright!

The moral to this story is, keep your eyes on the road, and always be ready for the unexpected.  AND – this isn’t always as easy as these blog entries make it look – sometimes you have to dig deep to make these things happen.  For example, on top of making the trip itself in less than optimal conditions, I also had to drain the family finances to ZERO (again…) 3 weeks before Christmas.  Of course, having the world’s most supportive and understanding wife REALLY helps in that department!

In the end, things worked out very well – I made it home safe and sound with a great E-Type shell, and found her a good home in time to get things back on track financially before the holidays.  All’s well that ends well I guess, but just keep in mind – it’s not as easy as it looks!