Or, more precisely...trashed trailer.
The race weekend went just fine. To ease the effort needed to prep the car, get it to and maintain it while at the track, reload it and drive home, Adin suggested not using the camper, staying in a motel, and renting a garage on pit row. All good suggestions and, with his help, it made the event much less demanding onmy aging bones and back.
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| Siata in Garage after its dozen lap excursion |
I had not been on a track in two years, so my goal was to refresh myself and also be sure the caar was in solid shape to begin refitting it for entry in the Mille Miglia. This is a 1000 mile open road time and distance rally honoring the original road races held from 1927 to 1957, when it was stopped due to the carnage which often resulted. It now is an expensive, but magnificent opportunity to drive freeely on some pretty magnificent rural roads and through many fabled medieval towns such as Siena and Florence...literally a once in a lifetime opportunity that has been on my radar for decades.
The weekend was spent dodging raindrops (some quite forceful). I actually only ran one of rhe four possible sessions I might have. The first was at 9AM on Friday, which would have meant an extra overnight or a very early drive and I was not up for either. So I was first on track in the second session, Friday at 1PM.
There were only half a dozen cars which went out, but even then I wounmd up last, running around on an apparently empty track. The only other sub liter displacement car was my engine builder Lee Osborn's special, and even it is way faster than the Siata. Though I can claim a 6th overall and second in class that is a "wink, wink" answer to the general public's inquiry as to how I did.
I did have two other opportunities to run, but passed on both. The first was Saturday morning and it was on and off haard showers and not only a very wet track but a likelihood you would get dumped on while driving...drove in pouring rain only once, just to day I did it, and learned mainly that "cold, wet, and scared" did nothing for my enjoyment. So pass on that one.
The afternoon could not make up its mind as to what it wanted to be. Once minute partial sun , the next pissing rain and cold. As it turned out, after I decided to pack it in and was on the highway returning to the motel it got reasonably nice out, but I have no regrets. I am superstitious enough to think that reversing decision at the last minute is just testing the gods and asking for trouble, whivh I don't need. The watchword for the car at this point in my life as well as its own, is preservation.
We had a nice meal and chat with Adin at Tarpy's...we had never before eaten inside and it has been decades since we were last there. We also decided to spend a dull night in what used to be the Way Station, by the ariport and closest place to the track...also a place we had not been to in many years.
After breakfast Monday morning we were on the road...I decided to tool up CA 1 to Watsonville and across to pick up Pacheco Pass, the latter being the way we had come in. This actually was much more pleasant than the section of 101 we otherwise would have been on, and even with some heavy rain at times it was more relaxed for me. In no time we were on I5 headed north towards home.
And then...bang! Or really, no drama at all that was apparent. I felt a very slight sort of tremor, and when I looked in the mirror I saw a wheel raoaring along in a lane over and a bit behind, though catching up. I remember thinking at first it could not be mine, as the trailer was still merrily rolling along and on the level, but it was quickly apparent it did have to be off my rig. I gradually slowed, the gyroscope effect tailed off and the tailer tilted to rie on the brake drum as I maneuvered towards the way too narrow shoulder, watching and hoping the wheel did not cause damage to anyone or wind up with cars inn a ball trying to avoid it. Miraculously that workd out.
Now what? Of course it was the right side I lost...so to try and even look at the camage mant exposing myself to traffic whizzing by at 70 or better, with absolutely no one changing lanes for their own and my safety.
SO...now what? No way to do anythng where I was. Nice young black guy...Caribebean descent possibly, pulling his own little trailer, stopped on the shoulder ahead of me, I saw him as I waa wrestling the tire up from the roadside ditch and back to the car 1/3 of a mile away. He graciously offered to put his truck in the slow lane to get traffic over while I pulled ahead on the shoulder so he could follow me off to a safer location.
We ultimately wound up at a poor looking gas stationin French Camp, surrounded by Latino farm workers in worn out clothes. Several of them offered to help find a mechanic who might work on the trailer, but of course on Sunday this would be a miracle if it happened.
Still, why is it that those with little resources of their own are the very ones o offer to help? They didn't ask who I voted for or what I thought of immigration...they just reached out to fellow human beings in trouble. It was the highlight of my day and well beyond, and made me embarrassed for our relative indifference to the plight of people who are oot white children of great privilege such as we.
The towing company also was more than just mildly helpful. While costly, they let me store the trailer in their yard while I tried to find someone who could work on it, or until I could get parts and work on it myself somewhere, those thesee litiginous days it was unlikely any firm would let me do so on their property.
Storing the trailer meant unloading it from the flatbed tow truck and reloading it the next day. I had watched the sympathetic driver do the loading and even helped make sure there was enough clearance, so I knew this was no small task for which the company could justify charging an extra fee, but did not.
And it was the towing company who suggested a possible solution I would never had though of, after the biggest camping specialty company in the US said they would not work on the trailer. Not a glowing endorsement of a place calling itself "Camping World." There are a hell of a lot of RVs running around pullling cars for local use in trailers or on dolls, and that lack of service by such a spacialty company was shocking.
Of all the places I would never have thought of, it was Les Schwab in Manteca who took me in. I had alwasy considered the company to be a low and and kind of shlocky place...sort of a "Pep Boys" of the tire world. Instead I found people who went out of their way to help, both empathetic and pleasant.
While the trailer continuses to just baffle me-this is the third time some sort of wheel oroblem developed while traveling- the adventure was a very positive verification that the angry hostility of the ightly news cycle is out of whack with the realities of humanity in the flesh. There are very good people in this country, and in all possible modes of ethnicity and heritage.
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| Les Schwab, Manteca California |
