0813 hrs - Seattle, WA

Road trips aren't road trips, in my mind, when something doesn't go wrong. Right? I may simply be convincing myself this is the case to make myself feel better. It's probably because I'm on the road enough that sometimes things are bound to go south, way south! That's just the way it is — I accept it. Sometimes it's funny stuff like leaving your buddy behind at a rest stop, by accident, because he left the van without you knowing it. That's funny. I have a rather dry sense of humor, and even I can't stop laughing at something like that.

Then there are the not-so-funny things that happen on the road. These are generally characterized by physical pain, loss of money, loss of time or broken vehicles. The last category best describes a little situation we had in Gresham, OR en route to Mt. Baker, WA.

We pulled out of Bend, OR at 8 AM sharp, packed up and ready to get up to Washington. The most direct route was through Mt. Hood National forest on Highway 26.

The winding road was clear beneath blue skies and light wind — the perfect conditions for driving through the mountains. Majestic Mt. Hood towered over the dense forests that lined the curving asphalt of the two-lane highway we were following. Incredible. And with the exception of the occasional pothole, the smooth road was nothing out of the ordinary.

By the time we arrived in Gresham, OR, just outside of Portland, we had been in the rig for at least three hours, and I was feeling more than confident that our trailer was fully functional. In the middle of town, as we were making our way to I-84, I felt a heavy jerk on the vehicle. I looked into the side mirror and, to my horror, saw a trailer fishtailing around behind us. The trailer appeared to have a mind of its own as it moved across the lines from our lane to the lane beside us. It was difficult to understand what exaclty was going on.

I quickly pulled off to the side, put on the hazard lights and made some assignments for the other guys. Kjell grabbed his camera and went to the far back to direct traffic around us while Alex went with me to assess the situation at the back of the van. What we discovered was a hitch ball that was still intact with the trailer coupler, only it was no longer attached to the van. Apparently the nice gentelman at Uhaul, who intstalled this, forgot the cotter pin on the end of the threading that prevents a situation like this. So not only did the trailer come off, but we were also dragging the hitch ball along the ashpalt grinding it to the point it could no longer be used.

MacGyver was one of my heroes growing up, so I was determined that this was definitely going to be my own MacGyver moment. I was about to get my dude on. If you were a product of the nineties you'll understand how important and cool a red swiss army knife and roll of duct tape truly are at a time like this. So I grabbed a few items that any telemark skier might have in his car: some channel locks, duct tape and, of course, a bunch of ski straps.

While Kjell directed traffic safely around us, Alex and I re-secured the hitch ball to the van. Because we lost the nut on the bottom of the hitch ball, we needed to make a duct tape stopper to keep the hitch ball from pulling out. 

We then secured the trailer coupler to the hitch ball by fastening ski straps from the underside of the hitch ball around the trailer toungue.

It worked! We managed to get to a place where we could pick up a new hitch ball, have it installed and be on our way. And we did it all in under one hour.      

The rest of the drive through Oregon and up into Washington was without incident. 

We pulled into Bellingham early Friday night. It was enough time to get some good Mexican food and go over our plans for the next day, which included stop two of the NTN Demo Tour. We knew we would finally be seeing some real snow, and the crew was excited.

We arose early and made the 70-minute trek from Bellilngham to Mt. Baker. If you have never skied in the Pacific Northwest, it is an experience like no other in terms of landscape. This particular road, to Mt. Baker, had gigantic coniferous trees. Moss-covered and beautiful, they created a lush green tunnel of branches above us. Along side the road was a river with a misty cloud hovering over the milky blue and green water. The drive was incredible enough on its own that we could have gone home and been content without ever setting foot on the snow.

The demo went great. We met a ton of new friends, and it was nice that quite a few alpine skiers and snowboarders gave it a shot on freeheel gear.

Thanks to Mt. Baker for having us!

We snuck a few turns in ourselves during the slow spots of the day too. POWDER!!!

We cruised down to Seattle yesterday and took a few hours to check out the sites on our way to Oregon. We are going to try and meet up with the local tele crew at Mt. Hood on Tuesday. The have a Tele Tuesday event that the Mt. Shop puts on. Hopefully we'll get some turns in with them.

Then it is on to Hoodoo for Northwest Tele Fest!!  

Thanks for checking in! 

— JM