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| Message Subject: Road Stories - Volume 1 | |||
Ranger |
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Posts: 3863 | OK, the Stranded on HWY thread got me thinking. Please throw me a road story about breaking down and what you did for resolution. Here's mine.... I leave southwest Michigan at 7pm to meet up with Al Warner and Pappa Joe to rustic camp and fish the Groveland Mine Ponds just outside Randville Michigan, up the the Yoop. 500 miles one way, about 9 hours. It's a long drive but I have a bunch of cocaine so I should be fine. Around 2am, just past Escanaba on highway 2, and I'm cruising in my older F150 extended cab at around 85mph. Suddenly, in a shallow spot, there's a big dead doe right in front of me. Whoa ****, no way to swerve or slow down, I roll right the hell over it. I can feel it tumble underneath my truck and in my mirrors I can see my trailer/boat jump up into the air. Bummer sez me. I pull over and the damage is significant - the deer has bent the trailer axel and my tires look like they should be on an abused hot wheels car. The deer also smacked the #*#* out of my humble 15hp merc motor, there's blood and hair everywhere, and I feel lucky the impact didn't rip the motor/transom off my little boat. Could be lots worse. So I limp down the road at about 25mph and in a couple hours I hit Iron Mountain, park it in the Walmart lot and get some sleep. First light I head to a nearby full service garage and wait for those guys to show up. By noon they had lifted the boat/trailer, cut off the axel, rebuilt the axel, welded the new axel back on, repacked the bearings, replaced the tires and handed me a bill for about $200. What a deal. After all that trouble I arrived at the ponds only 6 or 8 hours later than intended. Lucky. | ||
| ToddM |
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Posts: 20212 Location: oswego, il | A coming home from college for Christmas story. I know there was a major snow storm coming so I got an early jump on my 6hr dive to beat it. The winter was particularly cold and it was one of those well below zero wind-chill days. 15min into my trip it was clear my thermostat in my Pontiac Ventura with a super potent 110hp 260 Olds was stuck. It's Dec 23rd but I was early enough to find a mechanic in a nearby town and got it fixed in about 3hrs. On my way. About an hour later my car starts to bog down and soon I can only go 40mph. I stop I am looking things over, it's lunch time now so I eat and the car is fine. On my way again. An hour later, same thing. I pull off again,.look things over and notice the choke closed on the 2bbl quadrajunk. What to do. What can I stick in the carb that will keep it open and not fall in. I ended up taking the Pontiac emblem of the nose, perfect fit! On my way home! An hour later the snow starts, another hour, it's dark and whiteout conditions and I am going 20mph. I just passed this town of 100 people and I knew there was an s-curve coming up. I could not see it and I got the right front just off the road but it was enough to suck me right into the drift. Done and still about 2hrs from home. A car came by shortly going the other way and took me to the tavern in town. Called my family and let them know what was up. A young couple offered to take me in where I spent the next three days because the roads were closed. I spent Christmas there , spent time with a few families, shoveled snow and had some good meals. When my parents came to get me on the 27th they were still digging semis out of the middle of the road. I called to find out where my car went. When I called the place that had it they said it was 100 bucks to thaw it out. I said no, didn't know why they needed to. I went to start it, nothing. I opened the hood and you could not see the engine. Paid the 100 and drove home. Edited by ToddM 5/20/2021 5:36 PM | ||
| ghoti |
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Posts: 1264 Location: Stevens Point, Wi. | Early 70's living in Southern N.M. Each spring I would take a long weekend trip to San Carlos reservoir in Arizona for some crazy action on big crappies and bass. On the way home about 1AM on interstate 10 in the middle of nowhere, I started to feel a bad vibration. Pulled the truck over and checked tires on vehicle and trailer. All good. Crawled under truck and noticed my rear u joint was ready to fall out. Broke open the tool box and removed drive shaft. Dug through the boat and found an old clip style wire stringer. Cut the wire to proper lengths to replace the bad bearings, got some grease off the front ball joints, packed it in and reassembled. Made it the last 130 miles at 40mph. The whole time during repairs I only had 2 vehicles go past me. Talk about a lonely feeling, and no cell phones back then. | ||
| Chemi |
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ghoti - 5/20/2021 8:23 PM Early 70's living in Southern N.M. Each spring I would take a long weekend trip to San Carlos reservoir in Arizona for some crazy action on big crappies and bass. On the way home about 1AM on interstate 10 in the middle of nowhere, I started to feel a bad vibration. Pulled the truck over and checked tires on vehicle and trailer. All good. Crawled under truck and noticed my rear u joint was ready to fall out. Broke open the tool box and removed drive shaft. Dug through the boat and found an old clip style wire stringer. Cut the wire to proper lengths to replace the bad bearings, got some grease off the front ball joints, packed it in and reassembled. Made it the last 130 miles at 40mph. The whole time during repairs I only had 2 vehicles go past me. Talk about a lonely feeling, and no cell phones back then. Macgyver! I presume you didn't have any duct tape... | |||
| EsoxWanderer |
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Posts: 54 | Ranger - 5/20/2021 3:19 PM ...500 miles one way, about 9 hours. It's a long drive but I have a bunch of cocaine so I should be fine... This is the best | ||
| Pepper |
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Posts: 1516 | This one also happened on a cold December night. My wife and I had been to a wedding and headed home after midnight. We lived a ways outside town. It had been snowing a few hours and the were about 3 miles for home when the 74 Vega stopped. I got it to the shoulder. So we are stranded out in n the country with our wedding attire and it’s COLD Fortunately, a good guy came up and stopped to help and actually drove us home. The next day I went back to the car & checked the oil. It was about 2 quarts low. I gave it some oil and it started and ran fine home from then forward I kept close eye on the oil | ||
| mikie |
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Location: Athens, Ohio | Mauser and I were taking my Gambler boat up Route 7 into Marietta, Ohia, when a deer came running for my right truck fender. I swerved and so did the deer, and I thought we got off lucky. Then, I heard a thump and felt the trailer sway and the deer was doing a death dance in the roadway behind me. We pulled into a parking lot and found the trailer fender scraping against the tire, and the wheel at a bad angle. We Bent back the fender enough to get to the lake and back, but the trailer needed a new axle - the brake axle of course! It was interesting explaining to my insurance company how a deer ran into my boat. m | ||
| TCESOX |
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Posts: 1258 | Let's see. Should I go with the time I hit the 8 point buck with a '67 Galaxy 500? Or maybe the time a doe ran smack into the passenger side of my Honda Accord. Or perhaps waking up in the middle of the night on a long road trip, to discover I was the only one in the car that was awake; and I was in the back seat. Maybe losing all lights on the car at 1:00 a.m. on mountain road in Colorado. Or the slow motion 180 on an interstate during a blinding snowstorm at night, coming to rest about a foot from a 30 foot drop off(also in the Galaxy). Nah, since it's a fishing site, let's go with one involving a boat trailer and a learning opportunity. Not really exciting, but always room to learn. Headed out early in the morning for some mid-July walleye fishing on the flats on Mille Lacs. Bite was incredible. Lots of 26 to 29 inchers (this was about 4 years after the first slot limits were put in place). Flat, calm, hot day. Fish snapping on every flat we fished. By about 10:30, we were actually tired of catching big walleye. It got boring. Went to some rock piles and spent an hour or so catching smallies, which were also biting like crazy. By about noon, it was getting really hot, and we were actually bored of catching fish, so we split. It was literally, about 100 degrees. About 45 minutes south, blew a tire on the trailer. I had only acquired this rig a couple months prior, so it was fairly new to me. Got the jack out, and proceeded to try to change the wheel out. Problem was, my lug wrench didn't fit the new trailer's lugs. Had a tool kit with sockets, but no breaker bar or pipe to slide on, so no way to break the lugs loose. Just off the highway, was a used car lot, so we drove about 100 yards to the turn in, and another 50 yards to the parking lot, on the flat tire. Two people working, a sales person and a bookkeeper. Told them our dilemma and asked if there was a lug wrench we could borrow. Totally incompetent idiots. They just sort of shrugged and said "I dunno". I asked if I could look in the shop, as there was what appeared to be a large service shop. They said OK. Went into the shop, and there was virtually nothing there. I had more tools in my truck, than were in the whole shop, and not a lug wrench in sight. The two hapless idiots were no help, so I got the socket that fit the lugs on the trailer, and went around to the cars on the lot, until I found one with the same size lugs, and asked if they could pop the trunk so I could see if the car still had it's jack and lug wrench. After about 20 minutes of trying to find the keys, they popped the trunk and I was able to use the lug wrench to change out the wheel on my trailer. Lesson learned. One size lug wrench may not be enough to take care of both your vehicle and trailer. Now I keep a star lug wrench with four sizes, which allows me to help someone who may have a different size than either my truck or trailer. | ||
| Pepper |
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Posts: 1516 | The two deer stories reminded me of the time my son in law and I were following or guide down the Highway in northern Wi Between the time he drove by point A and the time we arrived a deer jumped in front of my truck upon examination we saw that the radiator was damaged. The guide had turned back by then and said he would call his mechanic. It was between 5 & 5:30 am. The guy says he can fix if he can find a replacement. So off we go fishing and about 10am we get the call there is Racine which was about an hour drive so we load up go get the radiator and bring it to the guy. He says come back at 5 we arrive back at 5 and it’s ready to go. I think I paid the mechanic $200.00. He had to do some body work to get the new part installed and get the lights working. | ||
| Ranger |
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Posts: 3863 | EsoxWanderer - 5/21/2021 11:47 AM Ranger - 5/20/2021 3:19 PM ...500 miles one way, about 9 hours. It's a long drive but I have a bunch of cocaine so I should be fine... This is the best Yea, well, everybody who gets into serious cola regrets it later. Everybody. | ||
| esoxaddict |
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Posts: 8772 | This was a good one. On the way back from Presque Isle... 7 hour drive, not too bad, except we fished until well past when we should have been on the road halfway home. I had come down with the flu the day before, and after 4 days of fishing and closing down the bar I was pretty well wrecked. So it's about 2:00 am, I'm still a ways North of Madison, got a solid 3 hours left to drive. I decide as soon as I get into civilization I'm just going to stop at a gas station and sleep. No way I can make another 3 hours. Next thing I know the road looks... Funny. Like something isn't right, but I can't put my finger on it... Why is the double yellow line over there?? What the hell kind of road is this? Oh #*#*, I'm on the wrong side of the road! Where am I, anyway? I have no idea which way I'm going, what road I'm on, or even if I'm still in Wisconsin?. How long have I been asleep? Was I asleep? What the... Just then I see a doe run across the road. Wow. Glad I'm not a couple car lengths ahead, that was pretty close! You know there's probably a buck behind her. There was. Airborne. Square in front of me. With nowhere to swerve and no time to stop, I did what anyone would do. I held on to the steering wheel with both hands stood on the brakes with both feet, closed my eyes and screamed "FUUUU....!!!!". The #*^@ thing must have cleared my hood and made it past before the windshield hit him, because I somehow missed him. | ||
| EsoxWanderer |
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Posts: 54 | Ranger - 5/22/2021 7:00 PM EsoxWanderer - 5/21/2021 11:47 AM Ranger - 5/20/2021 3:19 PM ...500 miles one way, about 9 hours. It's a long drive but I have a bunch of cocaine so I should be fine... This is the best Yea, well, everybody who gets into serious cola regrets it later. Everybody. Yup | ||
| CincySkeez |
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Posts: 630 Location: Duluth | Couple of years ago when I still lived in Cinicinnati a buddy of mine in the cities was absolutely in the best run of fishing he's ever seen. Thursday rolls around and he sends me a picture of his 2nd 52" in as many days. He gives me the classic, "Man, you have to come get on this bite." After thinking about it for a few minutes I decide that I'm going to drive up for the weekend and get in on the feeding frenzy. Plan was to drive from Cincinnati to the Cities Friday night, fish Saturday and drive home Sunday so I can be at work at 8 am on Monday. Well Friday afternoon comes, I'm staring at the clock and the weather...when I realize theres a nasty nasty storm rolling in. I punch out at 4:30 and race home to load up my gear and grab my cooler. Storm is still raging. Get home am packing my stuff and I hear a tree fall, a big tree, in the general direction of where my car was parked. I walk outside and see a huge pine down, looks like its on my car but as I get closer I see that the trunk of the tree barely missed the car. Its 6:30pm at this point. So I go grab the chain saw and a tree saw and cut my car free of the limbs, cut up the rest of the tree so it's not blocking the road. At this point I think my trip is over, I called my buddy and told him what happened and his response was classic, "Dude, you're clearly on a hot streak. Your car didn't get smashed, get your a** up here before your luck runs out!" So I set out for the Cities at 8:15 pm drove through to the other side of Bloomington IL, took a little nap at a rest area and eventually made it to St. Paul at 10:30am Saturday. I pull in the driveway, grab my gear toss it in my buddies waiting rig, take a giant toke (I also napped on the 30 minute ride to the launch) and off we go to fish the hot steak. First cast of the day myy buddyy has a lazy follow by a mid 40s fish and that would be the only muskie seen that day. We fished until midnight, went back to his place had a beverage and then I turned in for the night. Was up at 5:30 next day and on my way back to Cincinnati. Made it back by 6pm. I was exhausted and fishless. No real trouble, just an example of the dumb things we do for these fish. | ||
| ESOX Maniac |
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Posts: 2752 Location: Mauston, Wisconsin | Mikie, You still driving the Gambler with the hot foot? Have fun! Al | ||
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