We Tried: Part One

(Prologue)
It was Thursday afternoon, March 3rd, and we were all very, very tired. " Hey dude," Ike said as came out from under The Chief with something shiny in his hand, "check this out." I walked over and looked at a tiny flat metal object held between his grease stained fingers. He said, "I found this under there." The metal plate looked like it had come off an old trophy, the kind that kids get when they don't win, or for that matter, place in the competition. Inscribed on the plate were two simple, but prophetic words: "We Tried".

It's now Sunday, March 6th and I'm typing this in the back seat of a rented 15 passenger van. Our western tour continues. But as we make our way from Parker, Arizona to Los Angeles, California, we are suffering from the loss of one of our crucial members...The Chief.

The tour started out well enough. Our first date, playing at Bob Wills home base, Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, gave us a shaky but successful start. Our performance legs were rusty from lack of use and we all had to work at it to get our groove back. The next day we were up and quickly down the road to the Kansas Bluegrass Association's Winterfest, in Wichita, Kansas. We made our first show in the nick of time (which isn't that unusual). With two shows now under out belt, we pulled out our best for our evening headline set. Betse played like a demon throughout the show and we ended by featuring four brand new tunes, each written by one member of the band. Thankfully, the crowd went wild.

The next morning, The Chief was running like crap but we were able to get him up the road to Andover, Kansas for a day of much needed maintenance. Our friends Connie and Conan, had dedicated their entire Sunday to helping us get our rig ready for the road. They found us a great deal on a new air conditioner and asked their RV guru, Larry for a few hours of his time to install it and give the ol' Chieftain a good looking over. Larry brought his 17-year-old son, Seth, who proved to be not only a mechanical genius, but a circus-caliber contortionist as well. Nate and Seth set about replacing all the spark plugs and wires while Ike and Larry put in the new AC unit. Seth practically bent in half behind the front wheels to get to the plugs which, one by one, he tossed out on the ground for us to see. Each plug was burned and shriveled like overcooked link sausages. Then he went to work on the plug wires which had a similar carbonized patina. One wire was completely melted on one end and I overheard him say to no one in particular, "Man, I don't know how this thing even started up." When the day was done, our beloved Winnebago had working air conditioning, a tune up and a completely (or so we thought) waterproof roof. We even learned how to use the propane tank to run the refrigerator- a problem that had plagued us in the west the previous year. We all went to bed feeling really good about ourselves and really good about The Chief. This was going to be a heck of a tour. The next day we slept late and then set about cleaning up the mess we made the day before. With all the cd's packed away, everybody's personal gear stowed in it's place and a new and improved Chief ready to roll, we broke free of Connie and Conan's driveway around 5:30pm in hopes of making it at least halfway to Tucson, Arizona before bed.

We were about an hour outside of Wichita when a we heard a loud bang under our feet. Luckily, there was a rest area just ahead and we pulled off to inspect the source of the noise. We had blown out the outside right back tire. Nate pulled out the tire iron and I started removing the spare from the back while Ike tried to figure out how the old scissors jack might be operated. In vain, we all tried to get the jack to work, but it seemed impossibly rusted and also much too small to ever lift the behemoth is was under. Luckily, within minutes, the handle broke off and we saved ourselves the embarrassment of any further effort. We still had one aired up tire on that side and, with the help of a map and a cell phone, made a plan to limp the RV about 30 miles to Ponca City, Oklahoma to a 24 hour Wal Mart to buy a proper jack. We drove very slowly with our hazards on, but let me tell you, it was 30 seriously nerve racking miles. If the remaining tire blew out from the extra weight, we would be dead in the water. But by 10:30pm, we made it to the store, parked in an out-of-the-way location and headed in. We agreed on a 3-ton shop jack (the biggest one they had) that looked like it had plenty of power to get us safely off the ground. We paid for it and went back outside and started pumping. Although the chassis moved up several inches, we still could not get enough clearance to get the blown tire off, much less the full-of-air spare tire back on. We checked the operator's manual on the jack and it seemed like it was in perfect working order. Score: Chief one, Wilders zero.

With no other option, we called AAA RV and within an hour, a kid who seemed barely old enough to drive, showed up in a tow truck. With the poisonous diesel fumes still idling from his exhaust, the kid pulled out another 3-ton shop jack and started pumping. Not surprisingly, his 3-ton jack moved the chassis just about as far as our had. We all sort of scratched our heads as we realized that you can't use a 3-ton jack to lift a 30 foot Winnebago. Then a light bulb suddenly lit up over my head. We still had a perfectly good, albeit bald, full-of-air-tire on the inside of the blow out. Couldn't we just drive the inside tire up on a couple of boards? Wouldn't that make it easy and safe to remove the outside tire with no jack even necessary? Now, I make no claims to have any mechanical aptitude whatsoever and usually try to help out Ike and Nate in these situations by fetching tools or holding the flashlight where needed. So, not surprisingly, everybody agreed that this was a genius level moment for me. We fetched two of the boards we use to level the RV and within seconds the tire was raised and ready to be switched. I went to get the spare and Ike started removing the lug nuts. Strangely though, no matter how much he loosened them, the bolts still seemed tight. We thought maybe the lugs were just rusty and we each took turns forcing them and forcing them until finally we got all of them off. Nate grabbed the blown out tire and it still seemed to be stuck on the lugs. He gave it a kick and the bad tire finally fell off. That's when we realized that there was only one set of lugs for BOTH WHEELS. Now, because the inside wheel still had the full weight of the RV on it, we realized that our remaining wheel was now ready to fall off too. Nate inspected the wheel and saw that it had shifted slightly out toward the top. There was still plenty of lug showing but we realized that this was an extremely dangerous situation. SO MUCH FOR MY GENIUS MOMENT. We considered our plight and there was brief talk about trying to put the lug nuts back on for safety but none of us would volunteer for this hazardous duty. Stupidly, we had dismissed the AAA kid and now realized that we were going to have to call him back and request a much stronger jack than you can buy at Wal Mart. Ike called AAA RV again and within an hour, the kid rolled back up. He reached behind the truck seat and pulled out a much smaller bottle shaped jack. "This one's a 12-tonner," he said above the noise of the idling diesel, "I think this one will get her up." He quickly set about placing the tiny jack under the chassis and with about 25 short pumps, The Chief was listing like the Titanic. With the weight off the precarious wheel, the AAA kid started working to get it back into place. The downward force had made the wheel tilt out slightly and now it was seriously jammed. The kid started shoving the wheel from outside the fender but it still would not budge. Ike and I then watched in horror as he sat down under the jacked up wheel and started kicking it repeatedly until it finally dislodged and he was able to shove it back into it's original position. Then, without batting an eye, he grabbed the spare tire, shoved it into place, and spun the lug nuts back on. It was now about 3:00am. We followed the AAA kid back to his shop to check the air pressure in the spare and then headed back into town to reluctantly grab two motel rooms for the first sleep deprived night of the tour. It wouldn't be the last...