The dogs had a rough life, visiting Uncle Don
We had a great visit with Uncle Don at his home in Middletown, DE. We hadn’t been there since shortly after he moved in almost 3 years ago, so this time we got to enjoy the completely decorated house and Uncle Don’s knowledge of the best places to eat in the area. We stayed 2 nights with Uncle Don, which gave us one whole day to stay off the road – a very good thing, as it turned out, since we got a phone call shortly after we got up Thursday morning from one of Uncle Don’s neighbors, telling us that we had a very flat tire on the trailer.
The neighbor travels all over in the country in his RV, so not only was he on the lookout for problems with our trailer, he had all the equipment needed to get the tire off and down to the local garage to have the flat repaired. We don’t think either Uncle Don or his neighbor understood why we were so gleeful about the flat – but when we considered that we could have had the flat on I-95 on the way to Uncle Don’s, a flat in the driveway on a day when we weren’t planning to go anywhere was definitely something to be celebrated.
We were also pretty happy to be sitting in DE in 70+ degree weather. We’d been a little worried about getting out of the Northeast with our 2WD truck without hitting slippery roads, but at this point we figured we’d made it.
Saying goodbye in front of Uncle Don's house
What we hadn’t counted on was the wind as a front blew in from the west. It cooled the eastern seaboard down some, not enough for ice and snow, but driving the rig in the wind over the Chesapeake and the Potomac on our way down 301 from DE to Richmond, VA, on Friday was a little nerve wracking. Tom really didn’t appreciate it when I pointed out that the railing on the Chesapeake Bay bridge didn’t look much more substantial than a 3-board fence, and while the guardrail on the Potomac bridge is a little more substantial, the bridge itself is just one lane in each direction, and every time a semi passed us going the opposite way, our truck and trailer took a pretty good hit. When we made it over, Tom thanked me for holding the Jack Russells on my lap, and I felt obligated to tell him that I did it more out of need for a security blanket than to be helpful with his driving, which was fine in any case.
We also learned on this leg of the trip that Aaron (our Honeoye mechanic) was, as always, right when he warned us that having the cargo weight in the back of the truck combined with the weight of the trailer would make our brakes lock up on wet roads. We had a bit of rain, and Tom put the brakes on before a red light with what should have been more than adequate room to stop, and, just as Aaron had warned, the brakes completely locked up and had us heading towards the back of the car in front of us. Tom again did an admirable job of steering the skidding truck onto the shoulder, and we avoided even bumping the car we were following.
Highway wisdom
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