Less than halfway into the trip, in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, we blew a tire on our trailer. And it wasn't just a flat tire, it was a seriously shredded-to-the-bone mutilated tire. Unreal! This wouldn't have been too big of a setback, except for the following complications: (1) Our spare was a little bit shady and not suitable for the 1000+ miles we had to travel to get to Arkansas and then home to Chicago; (2) Due to our remote location, it was over 2 hours until AAA came to our rescue (though we did pass the time watching the meteor shower, which was pretty cool!); and (3) When putting our spare on, the AAA guy informed us that the wheel bearings on our trailer were dangerously loose and would need to be fixed ASAP or the trailer would spontaneously combust, or something terrible like that.
Getting out the spare tire, packed deep in the trailer. Music gear all over the shoulder of I-70 with traffic whizzing by.
We got up and running again, and continued east at the AAA recommended 50mph until we found some civilization...if you can call it that...remember, we're in Kansas, people. So where do we find a new tire and someone to fix our trailer at midnight on a Wednesday? An internet/GPS/cell phone combo attack finds an on-call tire shop about 50 miles from our breakdown site in Salina KS, and a groggy employee met us at the shop and sold us a new tire and spare (for actually way less than we were getting back home, even with the latenight surcharge...score!). We decided to get a hotel in Salina, get up early to get the trailer fixed, and still hopefully roll on to the festival with plenty of time to spare.
Oh, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it?! After solving the tire problem, we got back into the van to head to a hotel and saw that our "Service Engine Soon" light was on and noticed that the van was shaking pretty heavily when idling. Gimme a f*cking break! We now have both van and trailer repairs to deal with in the morning, and making it to the festival is looking pretty grim.
Adam and I were assigned the morning repair duty, getting up at the ungodly hour of 8:30am to start making phone calls to see who could do these emergency repairs and get us on the road. We found a local repair shop that could do both the van and trailer, and after checking things out, quoted us a time frame of about 2-2.5 hours to get the work done. Our festival set was at 10pm, and we had a little shy of 7 hours to drive; this should work. But, 2 hours turned into 4+ hours, complete with much pacing in the repair shop waiting room, and we didn't get back on the road until 3:15pm.
Jordan manned the wheel for the entire drive to Arkansas with expert speed and control but it seemed that all the forces were against us: an attempted gas/bathroom pit stop where all the facilities were closed, a gazillion toll stops slowing us up, a closed road and detour in Tulsa, and consistent 75mph speed limits leaving no room for our clunky rig to get ahead of the GPS arrival time. We rolled into the festival grounds right at 10pm, the supposed start to our 2 hour set, and had a slew of friends and crew waiting at our stage to get us loaded in at lightning speed, along with a bunch of fans awaiting our set and providing a nice warm welcome.
The downbeat was only 45 minutes late, and we played our asses off to a raging crowd for a full 75 minutes. You'd have thought we'd be tired and lifeless after such a debilitating 24 hours, but we ended up being so energized to have finally made it and to have such an appreciative crowd. It was really one of the most rewarding sets in a long time!
Post-show, we finally had a chance to slow down, hanging out with friends and catching some of Lotus' set. We left the festival around 2:30am and began the hour plus drive to our hotel that night. As if mocking us, our low fuel light came on just as we departed, and of course, we're in the middle of nowhere with no gas stations for at least 30 miles on our route of mountainous roads, and who knows if they'd even be open at this time of night. We could have gone half that distance in the wrong direction to get gas, but decided to just take the risk. Running out of gas would be a pretty comical way to end the day, so even the bad end of the outcome would make for a good story. I drove us expertly through the mountain roads, barely stepping on the gas pedal and using momentum to propel us down the mountain. Driving 32 miles didn't even push the needle below the red line, and we made it to an open gas station with plenty to spare. High fives and woo woo's ensued, and another day of living the dream had come to an end.
Many thanks to AAA, Commercial Tire, Oard's Auto Repair, Mike A, Micah, Ronny, Tiff, Kevin, Mike R., the festival stage crew and fans, and the many others who helped give a happy ending to our day from hell.
Wow, J, that was a val-worthy version of E.D! I dig it! V
ReplyDelete