well, at least it wasn't a *catastrophic* failure

[cellio]

Today was Pennsic land-grab, so several members of my camping group were up there to do setup. (Dani and I will join this effort tomorrow.) The first order of business is always to move the house, partly because they need room to maneuver the tracter and partly because a lot of our stuff is in it.

The Coopers started to move the house. One of the wheels came off (!). This caused a cascading effect that damaged two other tires, so all three tires on one side were dead. Move aborted. :-( My apprentice had in his possession one spare wheel and two new ones we just bought, and a pile of super-special lug nuts, but the folks at Pennsic didn't have his phone number. So eventually I got home from morning services and learned about all this, and we were able to reach Degan who hurried up there. Meanwhile, ariannawyn and Brandubh (and alaricmacconnal?) jacked up the house and started investigating, and once Degan got through the hour-long check-in line they were able to start swapping things around, a process that I imagine was long, messy, and frustrating. They think it's ready to roll now, but the Coopers were done for the day so won't move it until tomorrow. (Meanwhile, people shuttled cars back and forth to retrieve some of the contents so some set-up could happen.)

If it had tipped over while losing all the tires on one side, we would be doomed. Close call.

I have awesome friends. I feel awful that the weight of this work fell on them while I wasn't even there to help. I guess next year I need to be there on Saturday, which means being there Friday before sundown and sleeping in the car or something. Ugh. But less ugh-inducing than not sharing in the suffering when something goes wrong.

We will call the place where we got the new tires first thing Monday morning to order four more. The only reason I didn't get a complete set to start with is that we're upgrading to something more durable, and I wanted to make sure a pair would work before I spent money for all of them. (Everything should have worked, of course, but special orders can't be returned.) I wasn't supposed to need the other four this soon; after Pennsic should have been fine. :-(

Apparently there is also damage to, um, the part of the axle that the wheel fits onto (not sure of the specifics here). So I need to find a mechanic (or metalsmith?) who can make, err, a house call.

If I were doing this project over, I now know some things I would do differently. But I have to work with what I've got, because it's not practical to make changes.

Comments

[ariannawyn.livejournal.com]

Your being there wouldn't have changed much, except for my efforts to get ahold of you. Not to be mean, but you do not possess the necessary skills to have dealt with the actual problem (and neither do I, which is why I called Brandubh), so the rest of it would have played out the same, except you would have been standing there wringing your hands along with the rest of us. We had plenty of people to get the loads of stuff we moved by car (we even formed a bucket brigade to carry stuff from the house into cars/trucks) and your car isn't large enough to have been used for that purpose.

So all in all, I wouldn't worry about feeling guilty.

Minor factual points - I did have Degan's phone numbers (both of them) but when I called them he didn't answer. And while I attempted to jack the house up a bit prior to Brandubh's arrival, mostly to get the weight off the axle and wheels, I was only mildly successful since I didn't know how to use the jacks. Once they arrived, Brandubh & Tim got it jacked up properly, and when Degan arrived about half an hour later, of course he supplied the wheels and lug nuts.

See you later today.

[cellio]

It's not mean; I don't have the right skills. My feeling bad about it is more of a "solidarity" thing than anything else; I feel bad that you guys went through a lot of grief over this and I did not. (Or, rather, the grief I went through was mental anguish and not standing out in the heat and rain.)

BTW, I think you have stale numbers for Degan; when I reached him he wasn't aware of any messages waiting for him, and he was home at the time. Presumably you have his number now because he called you from it. (He told me that he only uses the cell phone; he doesn't have a land line any more.)