Well my plan worked as planned,,,,almost.
The loading and unloading was perfect, no work at all. Just a few dishes to clean up at home and 2 coolers to clean out.
BUT the trip to the comp sat morning was less then fun. Here's the deal.
The contest was good practice and it was a fun time.
There was a super terrible moment on the way there. In short many things contributed to this, the play in the surge brake, the tires being a little low on air, the tongue being just a tad low, and no sway bar on the pickup.
I was coming out of downtown, made a gradual left hand curve and headed down a pretty good hill. Right at the same time that I hit one of Missouri's super fancy bridge approaches I felt a gust of wind hit me.
Well when a 3rd grader has more smarts then the supervisor building bridges here there is no other choice but to almost fly like the Dukes of Hazard every time you cross a bridge.
The trailer started to push me into the next lane, all it took was a tiny correction and the trailer whip was in full swing. OMG guys, good thing that I made a visit to the sand box right before I left the house.
There is two ways to stop this effect quickly, neither was an option since my trailer brakes weren't working and two, I had two of the kids with me and wasn't taking any chances with them. The second option is to accelerate hard to bring the trailer back into control. This one is a gamble, most of the time it works but it can go really wrong.
I made a decision, BTW it was raining too.....after about 5 whips I decided that I had enough and I was going to have to set the trailer up against the shoulder wall to make it settle down. I guess I scared it when I crossed two lanes heading for the shoulder cause the whip quit.
Let me tell ya all something.........In 27 years of driving and 24 of them with a trailer about 75% of the time, I have seen alot.
And this was by far the worst most helpless feeling ever. It turned out to be about 3.5 seconds with about 5 gig of data transfer going thru my head.