The Horseback Riding Trip that Never Happened.

I love trail riding and I never get to go as much as I would like.  That being said I would love to be trail riding like 2 weekends a month at least and someday I will make that happen!  My mom invited the kids and I (Brad was busy farming) to join them in WI for Columbus Day weekend, which was really nice.  I had never pulled our horse trailer with our RV, our RV ended up being in the shop having some work done, and camping in a tent with the kids by myself didn’t sound like fun. 

Then my friend Marji invited me to join her and her family riding and camping.  Again the camping part wasn’t going to happen, but they were only 45 min from our house and it made for an easy day trip.  Marji has 3 girls and they were all willing to help me with the kids.  I packed the horse trailer the night before and had everything ready to go (diaper bag, lunch, snacks, drinks, toys, etc).  In the morning I loaded the kids in the car, drove to the farm, caught the horses and went to hook up the trailer.   It didn’t go well from the start!

I backed the car right up to the trailer and started to lower the trailer down, but I couldn’t get it to sit right on the ball.  Everyone was out of town and I had no one to help me.  So I put the jack back down and fiddled with a few things and tried again.  No luck.  So I put the jack down again but in the process it rolled backward and then jack wasn’t tall enough to get the trailer up on the hitch.  So I drove up to the shop, called Brad and asked where some blocks of wood were.  Brad pointed out that if I knew how to drive the forklift it would be easier.  He was right, but not helpful!  I got the trailer back up on the blocks, the car back up to the trailer again and tried to lower it down onto the ball.  It wouldn’t budge.  I was not happy.  I called Brad again and may have told him that I wanted our old truck and trailer back.  Completely irrational, but I had been working on hooking up the trailer for over an hour and frustrated beyond belief.  He told me that it was a silly request and that I should take a sledge hammer and hit the jack to straighten it out and that would possibly help.  I had my doubts but I walked back up to the shop and grabbed the sledgehammer.  Then I happily hit the trailer jack.  It didn’t help!

The trailer and the sledgehammer!!!!

So, our fun day was over.  I didn’t get to ride.  Riding by myself on trails or really anywhere with 3 kids is not a safe idea.  It started to rain and I made the kids go grocery shopping.  None of us were in a good mood!  But they did get to watch an entire movie while I was arguing with the trailer.  The most frustrating thing was that we had a brand new jack (we knew this jack was on its way out) sitting at Bob and Sarah’s.  Diane had it ordered and shipped to their house for us, but the kids and I have never installed a new jack before.

Brad looked at it later that week when they were rained out from farming.  He said the gears were stripped and nothing I could have done would have been helpful and I am lucky the jack did fall off!  I haven’t had a chance to use the new jack yet, but hopefully it goes a little better.  It couldn’t get much worse!