Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Full Moon Mountain Bike Ride

To celebrate the Full Moon, John Harter called a ride up at Smithville Lake. The only catch was no lights were allowed. He mentioned that we would be able to see just fine with the Full Moon and the snow on the ground. Let me be the first to say that John is FOS. You couldn't even see two feet in front of you. Not to go against his rides rules of no lights we pressed on....Most of the trail was in o.k. shape. Other parts were really hard to ride and made a really challenging ride. On the way back we (Tige Lamb and Mark Studnicki) somehow lost Harter, Puglsy man and the others. They might have done the smart thing and doubled back on the packed trails. We on the other hand peddled our bikes through several inches of deep snow. We only rode one lap which took nearly two hours (this included a stop to repair Tige's flat tire).

We decide to hit the Subway on the way home, but we never made. My trusty 1996 Ford Aerostar had a little mishap on the way home. I started hearing some loud noises coming from the front end. Come to think of it, I have been hearing noises for the past week, but thought it was something to do with the transmission. We stopped and tried to figure out what the problem was. I decided I was just going to park the van overnight in a nearby construction area because I just had this feeling that something was not right. I go to back up and turn around to park and the darn front wheel falls off. I lost all control of the van and thought for a second that I was going to hit Tige who was behind me. The van finally came to a stop several feet from a nearby ditch with my tire still in the middle of the road. Thanks to Tige, he ran out into the road to grab my tire before it was run over by an oncoming vehicle. I guess I should be very thankful that the tire didn't come off while traveling 70 mph. I could have wound up seriously injured or god forbid dead in a Smithville ditch. Thank you God!

4 comments:

Randy said...

Is that the sound you were telling me that you had been hearing, while we were on the way to Lawrence? I sure am glad you didn't lose the wheel on the Hwy somewhere....

Bradly Fletchall said...

Thats pretty crazy. Several of my friends and I had made a road trip to Tennessee for a car show several years ago (one of my friends has a show truck that has been on the cover of 3 magazines)

On the way back we are in southern Kentucky when one of the guys calls us (we were in 3 trucks total) and asks us to pull up next to him to look at his drivers side front wheel. It looked ok to us and the road was kinda rough so we just kept driving. So then he is ahead of us about 1/4 mile up when his front wheel came off doing about 70 mph. His lug nuts came loose (he had never checked them after putting on Aluminum wheels...Big no no)

The wheel kept rolling and luckily he didn't loose control. It scraped his control arm up some and he was able to pull over.

We never did find his wheel. The road was pretty straight but there were some really big ravines on either side.

We put his spare on and drove it home.

Jennifer said...

That sucks about your tire - good thing you were almost stopped. A guy I knew was once hit by an 18-wheeler's tire as it careened over the interstate from the opposite direction (while going 70 mph) - smashed his windshield and wrecked the van but luckily he was OK. Scary stuff...

Shane A. Jones said...

I had a 55 chevy when I was about 18 or 19. One day I was driving down the highway and started feeling a weird shimmy. I t started getting much worse and then.. The front end crashed down on one side. I thought my tire blew out, but when I looked over I saw my front wheel rolling along in the ditch beside me. Nice. That really jacked up the front of my 55.