Some days I shouldn't operate motor vehicles.

Yeah. See, sometimes you really need to think things through. Otherwise...well, otherwise really bad things can happen. For instance:




I had the notion that, since the Jeep's little trailer could hold all the 2X12s I hadn't already hauled to the cabin's staging area in one trip, then I should go ahead and do that.

This was a mistaken notion.

I got all the lumber, the rebar, a couple of pallets and a few other things loaded on the trailer; that part went fine. Of course that much weight hanging off the rear of the trailer meant that the poor thing had an enormously negative tongue weight, but I figured we really weren't going far and I'd just drive real careful. That part, I got away with.

Then...only then did I check the trailer's tires. One was visibly low but not alarmingly so; I'd already figured that I'd need to shoot some air in them before I left. But the other was squashed damned near flat under the load. So, because I hadn't already made enough of a mistake, I proceeded to compound the error by backing the trailer up toward the barn.

When I turned on the compressor and returned to the trailer with the hose, I found that the tire had gone completely flat. And when I tried to re-fill it, I found that the reason the tire had gone completely flat was because it had come right off the bead. Oh, bother: Now what was I going to do?

I found where the air was escaping, and it was only this one little place. So while still shooting air into the tire, I...did something really, really dumb. I pressed my gloved thumb against the escaping air. To my shock, this actually worked. What would not have been to my shock had I been thinking at all, the tire proceeded to grab my glove between the tire and the wheel, and tried to do the same to the meat of my thumb. At last, and probably just a microsecond in time to escape actual injury, two brain cells met a synapse and I realized that I'd better stop airing up this tire right fricking now.

Because the gods love fools, I even managed to rescue the glove by letting some of the air back out, and then I could go ahead and air the tire up. But, jeez. Sometimes I really do need a keeper.

I blame Fritz.