Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - Back to the Stables

Slept late (as we had expected), packed up and headed out right at the noon checkout time. Met up with my old friend Steve at a local IHOP for brunch. He had just been around the globe in the last few weeks, first to Germany then to New Zealand, so his body clock thought breakfast at 12:30 was a good idea, too. After a pleasant meal, Hubby and I headed back to the stables where we unpacked our suitcases and prepared to pack up and leave the next day. The weather forecast had been calling for rain today and clear skies and cooler tomorrow, but they’ve been wrong about this rain for some time, and we’re concerned about getting out in the morning. We decided to hook up the horse trailer this afternoon and pull it out onto the driveway where it had better traction, but the van slipped and slid all over the place even WITHOUT the trailer behind it, so we decided to do something we had been planning on doing but hadn’t gotten around to; rotating the tires on the van. Last year, we had bought to huge honking Wrangler tires with giant tread (which look really MEAN on the van!). We put them on the front because the other tires had worn unevenly (for a long list of reasons too boring to talk about), and that made a loud thunking noise on the front, so we put the loud tires in the back and the new Wranglers on the front, figuring once the bumps were worn down that set would be quieter later on, which is exactly what happened. But the tread on the old tires, naturally, weren’t too great anymore (not bad enough to get rid of, just not great in certain circumstances, like soft, wet grass on a hill with weight behind it), so we headed out to the Wal-mart Auto Center, and two hours later they rotated the Wranglers to the back and the now smoother old tires to the front. Though it was dark, we decided to go ahead and try to move the horse trailer, since the newly revised forecast was calling for more rain during the evening and overnight hours. Fortunately, everything worked our perfectly. The Wranglers had no trouble gripping the grass, even with the added weight of the horse trailer behind it, and we managed to pull the trailer up onto the gravel driveway easily, with no damage to the yard. Moments afterward, it started drizzling again, so we congratulated ourselved on a job well done and headed inside to the warmth of the trailer and a hot meal of leftover Indian food. The rest of the evening was quiet, and we headed to be early in preparation for our early start tomorrow morning.