Quest update

We had a good and interesting weekend at Quest. It all started on the
ride up to the event, when about 30 miles out from home one of the tires
on the trailer blew. I'm talking explosive detonation here. It sounded
like someone lit off an M80 and the Jeep shook. I pulled over right away
and saw a shredded tire on the trailer. No big deal I thought since i
have a good spare on the trailer. We unloaded the whole back of the Jeep
to get to the lug wrench and jack that are stored with the spare tire
under the floor.

I proceeded to jack the trailer up and remove the blown tire. Once i had
it off, I went around to the front of the trailer and started spinning
the wing nut off that holds the spare under the trailer. When it got to
the very last thread, it stopped dead. I found a multi-tool I keep in
the Jeep and used it to spin the nut off, only to have the entire
threaded rod unthread from the nut inside the trailer (which i could not
get to without unloading the entire trailer). Now I had a problem. I had
a spare tire with a rusted on nut on one side of the rim and a stuck
wing nut on the other and only ONE pair of pliers and no other tools.
Needless to say this is the last time I leave the tools home.

I called AAA and had them send someone to help. In the meantime we
looked for a way to get the wingnut to go the last 3 or 4 turns to
remove it. We ended up with me holding the tire between my knees,
holding the hex nut with the pliers, and Rain hitting the wing nut with
her metal ground quiver. Eventually, we got it loose and I was able to
put the spare tire on. About the time we got the stuff reloaded in the
Jeep the guy from AAA finally got there. He had air on board, so was
able to inflate the spare which was a little on the low side.

We got to Quest about an hour later than we expected and got the 2 gers
set up. I have to say that they worked out really well. We had loads of
space inside and they proved to be waterproof when it rained. I was glad
I got the smoke holes cut before Quest. They really did their job well,
including venting smoke from the stove when we were cooking. We
comfortably sat 12 people for dinner and still had plenty of room to
navigate around.

The new & improved camp benches worked well too. They really cleaned the
common area up by allowing us to sit on the supplies instead of piling
it in plastic tubs around the sides.