I don't really know when I became "the trailer guy."
Backing a boat through the mulch and into the garage while it's raining is new, though.
It's drizzling and I'm cutting the wheel while easing off the brakes. Getting the hitch lined up to hook up the trailer was a little funky. This boat was parked off to the side of the driveway in a raised mulch bed. I basically had to back in at a right angle. And balancing the tires on the curb, so they'd lower down into the mulch slowly, without crashing into the jacked-up trailer, was a bit of a fun twist.
No, seriously.
Checking my mirrors, I'm watching the gaps between the boat and the garage door frame. I know I need them to stay the same size while rolling this thing back into the bay. Glancing over my shoulder, I feel the palm of my hand flex into the top of the steering wheel. Neck still craning back over my shoulder, I gradually spin the wheel to adjust the angle, keeping those precious gaps the same size. Last thing I need would be to smack the frame and bring down the roof...
Huh.
Not bad.
Things are going pretty smoothly. I mean, I knew they would... for whatever reason, I seem to do really well with trailers. But it's not like I drive them a lot—at least not anymore. So I'm not exactly sure how these skills stay sharp.
The trailer hitch is nearing the lip of the garage now, and I'm seeing the red brake lights bouncing off the walls. My dad had this twenty-one-foot outboard cuddy when I was a kid, but I never drove the trailer. In fact, he had this Toyota 4Runner with something like 385,000 miles on it and I don't think anyone other than him sat in the driver's seat with the engine running. He also had this little landscaping trailer that hooked up to his riding mower, though. And that I drove a fair bit. But I remember struggling at first. Cutting the wheel the opposite way you wanted to turn took a lot of getting used to. Eventually, I figured out how to use the momentum of the hitch to "push" the tongue of the trailer into an arcing path. It wasn't until years and years later that I became thankful for knowing how to do that.
I was guiding a multi-week trip in the Yellowstone/Teton region. One day my co-leader was driving and we were on this section of road in Yellowstone near Hayden Valley full of bison. It's a big loop, with two-lane traffic. The problem was that we were going the wrong way and there was nowhere to turn around.
That summer, we were basically living out of a 15-passenger van and a 12-foot cargo trailer hitched to it with all of our gear. After a couple of weeks, our group would change. The locations would vary. But it was still my co-leader and I with that van and the trailer. So on that day in Hayden Valley, when there was finally no oncoming traffic, my co-leader was feeling comfortable and went for the U-turn. But when she reached the edge of the pavement, she looked over at me with panic-stricken eyes.
What would normally be a three-point turn, turned into a tangled mess. The road wasn't wide enough to straighten out the trailer, so it was stuck at a whopping 90-degree angle. If she kept backing up, it would've collided with the van. It'd have punched through it like the tab on a can of soda. And so, with traffic backing up in both directions, she asked for help and we swapped places. After all, I was already "the trailer guy" by then.
"You're good!"
I don't really know when that became my calling card. Putting the car in park, I roll up my window and kill the engine. Stepping into the drizzle, I start heading back to unhitch the boat and block it in place for the winter. It's not even my boat; I've never been on it. But it seems like it'd be fun. More fun than backing it through the mulch and into the garage while it's raining?
Maybe, but I doubt it.
Hard saying not knowing.
* * *
What's your calling card? Where'd you get it?
onward.
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