Flippin The Van In Iowa (Well Almost)

Before I address the impromtu dance party that erupted in a suburban Chicago Best Western lobby earlier this week I must digress to a sleepy Tuesday morning in Iowa to tell the tale of the incredible swaying 16 foot trailer. First a little background. One of the most stressed experience requirements for attaining this job was that we had significant experience hauling a utility trailer on previous promotional cross country adventures. It seems that the team that had our very positions of NB Brand Ambassadors last summer drove off of the lot and within 10 minutes had entered a bad wind storm and flipped the trailer on its side! You can't blame the folks for not wanting a repeat performance so driving experience was top priority.

Not having any experience myself with hauling anything (unless you count my brother on the handlebars of my yellow Ross bicycle) I did what any good job interviewer must do.....I lied. But not about my trailer experience, about Boom's. I talked him up. I said he had driven every type of vehicle imaginable. I basically said he could drive it no problem and I would take little stints until I got comfortable. The defining moment of the interview process was when they sepreated us for some individual interviewing. That's when I sang the praises of ole Boomy. Well when they walked in to talk to Boom the woman said "We understand you have been downplaying your trailer experience." Boom ran with it and just like that we were hired.

They decided to give us some training with the trailer anyway. They brought in a professional trailer driving guy from Ottowa, no kidding, and he was to take us out on the road and teach us to park and turn around and all that jazz. When we arrived for the training and caught our first view of the monstrous trailer be both felt it like a punch in the gut. We doubted we could handle the thing and wanted to quit on the spot.

We hung in there though and after thousands of miles of on the job training we both consider ourselves the worlds best driver (no different than before now that I think of it).

Swaying is a common occurance while dragging a trailer around. Speed, weight distribution and jerky driving seem to be the main culprits. At first it was terrifying, especially for the passenger, but now it's so routine we hardly flinch. It sways a bit, we'll slow down till it stops and off we go.

Fast forward to last week. This is a big event, the junior olympics. We're in the same location for a week straight. The top brass convened to see us in action. This is one of the few times we have to use our secret weapon misting fans to cool down the athletes. This requires us to fill up two gigantic 50 gallon jugs of water which are attached in the back rear of our trailer. (Remember what I said about weight distribution).

Now I'm not sure how much 100 gallons of water weighs but as someone I know might say....it ain't light. We were told not to drive far with the tanks filled, and we haven't, but today we were 11 miles outisde of Des Moines and had to take the highway. The load feels heavy but I'm not worried about a thing, we've driven with the extra weight before with no problems (not on the highway though dummy). Anyway, as I get up in speed to about 40 or 45 it starts to sway. I slow down and it stops. We chug along. It starts to sway again. I slow down. Too dumb to realize it's the water that I just put in the tanks 10 minutes prior I try to keep up with the rush hour traffic and bring it up to around 50 mph.

Before I know what happened we start to sway and sway bad. I let up on the gas peddle but it's too late. I can't brake now or we'll flip for sure. My heart sinks as I look in the sideview mirror and see the huge black beast entering and exiting my view. When it exits I see a row of slow moving cars dropping out of view. We must have been in all three lanes of the highway. The frightened motorists were effectively ducking for cover minding not to drop too far back less they miss the fiery crash that was sure to come. I remember thinking how much the scene in my mirror looked like an episode of CHip's I saw when Ponch had to stop traffic on the California freeway due to an out of control truck. He drove his motorcycle in swooping S's and slowed down until they stopped.

I tried to steady the van which was reacting to the weght shift of the trailer and weaving in the opposite direction. I decided to try to guide it slowly over to the side of the road and pray that we could slow down enought to avoid a flipover. I looked over to Boom. He actually gasped and then groaned as he gripped the dashboard. He was looking out his sideview mirror. I can't imagine the terror he must have felt.

I imagined this is how a pilot of a doomed airliner must feel when he knows a crash is inevitible. Time slows down. Your heart stops. You're looking death in the face. Allright, maybe I'm exaggerating a little now but trust me, it was some scary ass junk.

The scariest thing about it may have been the sound of the trailer tires straining against on the pavement. Swoooooosh left, swoooooosh right, swoooooosh left again. It was the sound of something terrible about to happen.

After about 10 full seconds the movement behind us begins to subside. Finally we ease to the side of the road and the traffic creeps by curiously and then speed off to work. We spot check the trailer for damages sure we would find a flat tire but everything looks sound. Reluctantly we climb back in to the van, I hit the hazard lights, and we crawl the rest of the way to the exit at around 30 mph being honked at and flicked off here and there along the way.

As we take the exit we hear a loud bang and Boom wonders if someone had hit us from behind. We drive on, we're only a mile from our destination now. At the next light a motorist franticaly flags us down and tells us we're riding on a flat in the trailer. That would explain the buring rubber smell. We lurch along to the nearest parking lot to tackle our next disaster.

This story is getting on so I'll sum it up. The jack broke. The client and our boss in Boston were ringing our cell phones alternately. I flagged down a passing tow truck. His left us his heavy duty jack as he went to another call. I almost kill Boom by releasing the jack just as he was about to slide under the trailer. The weight is so huge the super jack almost couldn't do the job but finally, with the addition of a wooden block, we get the spare on. We hook up the generator and empty one of the tanks to relieve the intense pressure on the other beleagured tires all while fending off the bigwigs waiting for us at the jobsite.

Finally we arrive onsite covered in grease and sweat. We quickly set up and come through like champs in the end. By the end of the day our nightmare morning is a distant memory and everyone is happy with us. Little did they know we were probably about 2 mph away from this entire promotion crashing to a hault on the side of highway 65.