This blog is long overdue, as the events involved transpired several weeks ago. However, the combination of emotional trauma, holiday busyness, and old fashioned laziness prevented it. We made the rather questionable choice of not spending the holidays in Alaska. This poor choice was compounded by accidentally double booking the first day of Pennsylvania doe season with a book signing in Ohio. We were honored to be invited to a book signing, despite the fact it meant postponing deer hunting for a few days. However at the time of scheduling, I did forget that doe season opened that day.
Friday morning I took the snow tires off the limo, and replaced them the normal tires and wheels. It was a relief to have matching rims on the limo again. Around noon we finished packing the car, and headed west to Ohio. “We got a smooth ride ahead” I told Marlene. “No trailer, and no snow in the forecast”. This observance turned out to be incorrect.
The original plans were to take the Ohio office out for supper, then retire for the night to our motel in Berlin, and head to the “Gospel Book Store” the following morning, feeling refreshed and carefree. However, somewhere on route 80, these plans got a bit more complicated. “It feels windy out”, but I observed “the trees aren’t moving”.
Marlene was driving, and suddenly the limo lurched a bit and horrible scraping sounds came from the rear drivers side. “I think we have a flat tire” Marlene casually said. “No, we have worse problem than that, pull over!” I replied. In my experience flat tires usually do not make horrible scraping sounds, unless ignored for several miles.
We were in the left lane, and so we had no choice to get off the left side of the highway. This turned out to be fortunate, as the problem was also on the left side. It appeared our wheel had gotten tired of riding along, and broke loose and headed off its own way. Then I remembered I had forgotten to retorque the lug nuts at 100 miles. The studs on the car were hopelessly mangled.
This all occurred around 3:30 in the afternoon, giving me some hope to find a towing shop that was opening. But after calling several places, I was about to give up. “You have a car that is how long!! And 8 people!!!” they would exclaim, and then the conversation was over. I guess they don’t make roll backs like they used to. Finally I called one, and the fellow on the other end said “ok, let me talk to Dave, he likes limos”. This was good on several accounts. First, I don’t believe I ever met a person named Dave that I didn’t like. Second, I don’t think I ever met a person who liked limos that I didn’t like.
Finally, “Dave” called me back. “I’ll be out soon” he said. “But I’m not sure how I’m going to get a 26 foot car on the roll back”. At that point I didn’t correct him, but the car is actually 28 feet long. I forgot to mention to Dave that we had eight people with us, and had I thought of it, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it.
About 45 minutes later Dave showed up in his rollback. He promptly backed up to the car, dropped the rollback deck, and started to prepare to load it up. “Get in the cab” he told me. “What about the seven people in the car”? I asked. This got a rather explosive verbal response. To avoid causing legal problems for Dave (or perhaps myself), I won’t mention how we got back to his garage.
But, Dave lived up to his name, and the limo was repaired and on the road soon after 6:00PM. We never did get to take the Ohio office out to eat. But we did make it to our motel before midnight, and we made it in plenty of time to the books signing the next morning.
And, the following week I didn’t shoot any doe, but I did get a 6 point buck. I was pretty happy about that! All is well that ends well, I suppose.
