THE LAND NORTH OF SUPERIOR

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There are older people in the world for the good of all us.  These elder people are regarded as leaders, and many are, but I enjoy elder people for two things, all the stories and experiences they can tell you and for the collection of one liners attributed to them to point the way in our lives.  One such one liner proved too prophetic for me.  Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.<o:p></o:p>

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For several years I had been complaining about my right shoulder being sore, stiffening up and not wanting to fully extend when lifting something.  I seemed to do the most complaining lifting  my boat on and off  the top of my truck.  I needed a boat trailer!  Well last spring my dear wife said she’d had enough of my whining, she didn’t mean it quite like that, lets go!  The lets go turned out to be an area recreational vehicle and boat dealer, one we’d dealt with for several years.  The dealer was told the Big Guy needs a boat trailer, sell him what he wants.<o:p></o:p>

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Right off the bat I realised that I better make no mistakes here so I settled into a funk and cleared out the old grey corpuscles to ready them for action.  The trailer couldn’t be one of these eight-inch wheel wonders.  Yes twelve or thirteen-inch wheels were a must.  As far as a tilting trailer goes I thought I could get by perfectly well without that option as I reviewed the places I liked to launch.  The trailer would have to be made for a 14-16 foot boat as my plans were, and are, to go to the larger 16 foot craft.  The trailer also must have a two inch ball so there is no need to have multiple size hitch balls to change.   All that settled and done we left the showroom, with my new trailer invisible behind my truck, and headed for home.<o:p></o:p>

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Then came the hard work.  Make a hitch for the back of my tent trailer so I could run a b-train in the bush.  The wiring harness had to be extended from the back of my truck to the back of the tent trailer.  All the wiring was carefully tucked into grooves and runways then tie-wrapped into place.  A test revealed everything was in order.  The boat, motor and gas tank were all loaded onto the shining new white trailer, and we all waited for Nipigon 10 to burn herself into control so we could access our perennial pickeral opener spot.  Good luck, Nipigon 10 was to rage for another two weeks.  Something must be done.  New trailer  -  no fishing, were they connected?<o:p></o:p>

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On pickeral opening we decided to go to a different lake for a day trip, just to try the trailer out.  It rained buckets the night before our opening day trip.  But the sun was shining at seven when I pulled the drain plug from my boat to let it drain.  With water marking our back trail we set out.  On the way in you couldn’t tell you were pulling anything.  You also couldn’t see anything behind the truck.  I started watching the shadow to tell me we were still connected and travelling together.  On the bush road I stopped every so often to check the straps and tied owns.  The rear ratcheting one kept coming loose, and worse it it was rubbing against the side of the boat and almost burned through.  Some matting under the straps solved that problem.  We got to the lake.<o:p></o:p>

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I got the truck and trailer turned, all set to launch for the first time but I couldn’t.  There were four-foot whitecaps pounding the shore.  Any attempt to launch the boat would have either smashed it against the trailer or filled it full of water and sunk.  Egg salad sandwiches are one of my wife’s specialities and one of my favourites.  They tasted good while they lasted as we sat in lawn chairs reading, her a novel, me the fishing regulations for the year.  But that came to an end too.  The waves kept on rolling and maybe even getting bigger.  Major loved all the attention and stick chasing he was getting but even he grew tired.  And the wind blew.<o:p></o:p>

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Seven hours after we left home we returned.  The wind was just a gentle breeze.  My boat was dry on the trailer.  Two sets of inexpensive ratchet straps had been lost on the way back and the boat was secured with odd bits of rope from my truck..  It would have to wait for another day to launch.  As I put my keys into my pocket I was mumbling some not very nice words about this new trailer and the luck it had brought.  I felt something in my pocket that didn’t belong.  I pulled out the drain plug for my boat, that I had put into safe keeping that morning, while the boat drained from the heavy rain during the night.  I hadn’t thought of the drain plug the whole time we had waited for the winds to settle down.  Would I have thought of it in my hurry to launch if the winds had died?<o:p></o:p>

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So welcome to my world, now that I had what I asked for did I really know what to do with it.  Maybe I needed a few lessons to get the most out of my new trailer.<o:p></o:p>

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