![\"orchard-installationwheel300.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/orchard-installationwheel300.jpg\")
<\/a>What a guy night and day.\u00a0 Last night I relieved Kate after the trailer blew its tire.\u00a0 The truck and the speeding vehicles on 10 kept me company until the night driver from Pomps (would I make this up?) showed up to tell me I needed not only a new tire, but a new wheel, too.\u00a0 A Jungian would ask (and I am one, so I will) if this uniformed man with a third eye, a battery powered lamp, came out of the night as a psychopomp, ready to carry me into another realm.<\/p>\nHe did.\u00a0 After he left, I went home for five hours of sleep, then up again to find a tire and wheel.\u00a0 It was easier, but not straight forward.\u00a0 The folks who made the trailer went out of business a year ago (natch) and the new folks no longer stocked this tire.\u00a0 But, “Northern Tool or Discount Tire might have it.”\u00a0 Northern Tool, “We have every trailer tire, but that one.”\u00a0 (again, natch)\u00a0 At Discount Tire I discovered why, “Oh, that’s an automobile tire, not a trailer tire.”\u00a0 Soooo.\u00a0 “Yes, we have it.\u00a0 But you’ll need to measure from the center of one lug nut to the far side of the one after the one\u00a0 you’re measuring from.”\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 4.5 inches.\u00a0 Discovered in the pouring rain.\u00a0 Of course.<\/p>\n
“Give me two.\u00a0 Just in case.”\u00a0 Over to Discount Tire.\u00a0 Two new tires with what looked like a flimsy rim, but what did I expect from discount tire?\u00a0 Over to the trailer for my third visit since its unscheduled stop.\u00a0 Yes, the lug nuts would not come off easily.\u00a0 The guy from Pomps, the psychopomp, had put them back on with a pneumatic gun.\u00a0 I had me.\u00a0 It took a while, kicking the lug wrench to move it off the threads likely corroded from the two years the trailer sat outside.\u00a0 Again, all in the rain.\u00a0 Jacking, jacking, jacking.\u00a0 Slow movements up.\u00a0 The new tire.\u00a0 Tighten. \u00a0 Jacking, jacking, jacking.\u00a0 Rain.\u00a0 Mud.\u00a0 Cars and trucks whooshing past.<\/p>\n
At the end I had one final challenge.\u00a0 How to put the little truck’s trailer hitch ball under it’s female receptacle on the trailer?\u00a0 Not easy when you can’t see the trailer.\u00a0 At all.\u00a0 After I stuck two sections of the jack handle into the garden blend, they stuck up high enough to line it up.\u00a0 Success.<\/p>\n
The slow drive home seemed anti-climactic.\u00a0 Now, I’m going to pick up some more soil.\u00a0 Not quite so much this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
63\u00a0 bar falls 30.15\u00a0 0mph NNE dew-point 60\u00a0\u00a0 sunrise 7:04\u00a0 set 7:04 Waning Crescent of the Harvest Moon\u00a0 rise 2:44 \u00a0 set\u00a0 5:23 What a guy night and day.\u00a0 Last night I relieved Kate after the trailer blew its tire.\u00a0 The truck and the speeding vehicles on 10 kept me company until the night driver … Continue reading Permaculture Side Quests<\/span>