One Exhausting Trip To Scottsdale.....

The morning we left for Scottsdale, I woke up with a terrible sore throat. I just knew that I was getting sick. I had not had a cold in exactly one year, until the day we were to leave for the horse show. Now if that isn't bad luck, I don't know what is. When I arrived at the farm, I loaded my luggage into the horse trailer then set off to get the horses ready for the long haul. We were hauling 6 horses in the 6-horse trailer, which me and one of the other girls that works at the farm, A, would be driving. And M and D would be driving the semi, with 12 horses. 2 more horses would be coming down with their owner later.

Loading the horses was pretty uneventful, except for one of our youngsters that was to go in the semi, she didn't want to load. She had never been to a horse show, and had only hauled in our 3-horse trailer for some hauling experience, so we put her in the 6-horse. She happened to be our most expensive farm horse, and now she was in the trailer we were driving! As soon as everyone was loaded, we hit the road at 11:30 on Thursday morning. For the rest of the day, the drive went smooth. Hit a little traffic here and there, but no complaints. A and I were enjoying the fact that it was just us 2 girls in the truck and we got some quality girl talk in.

We drove throughout the night and into the next day. We don't layover on this trip, so we try to sleep as much as we can in the truck. But that is impossible for me. I can't sleep in a moving vehicle. On top of not being able to sleep, my throat just got worse and worse. Then the head/sinus crap hit me. Lovely.

Sunrise in California

By the next afternoon, we were way ahead of schedule, and had figured that we would arrive in Scottsdale around 7:30 that night. We were pretty excited to get there early enough to get the horses settled in, go out to dinner, then home to shower. But not everything goes as planned. Around 2:30 that afternoon, A was driving and we heard this loud popping noise. We were a little concerned, so we called the guys in the semi to say we were going to pull over to check out the truck and trailer. They ended up pulling over and we pulled in behind them. It sounded like a tire blowout, so we just wanted to make sure everything was okay. The guys get out to look over the truck and trailer and didn't see anything wrong so we decided to get back on the road. A was getting tired, so I took over driving before we pulled back onto the freeway. About 10-15 minutes later, as we were driving through San Bernardino, CA, I could not get the truck to go more then 50 mph. It just froze on that speed, then all of a sudden I was losing power. We were going up a hill, and the speedometer went from 50 mph to 10 mph in about a minute. I told A to call the guys and tell them something was seriously wrong. The temp gauge was on high and smoke started coming from the hood. Great! I put on my flashers and tried to get over. Unfortunately, driving in California is not exactly a friendly place to break down in. To all the Cali drivers out there, if you ever happen to see a truck towing a 6-horse trailer with their flashers on, smoke pouring out of the hood, obviously there is a HUGE problem, LET THAT VEHICLE MOVE OVER TO THE SHOULDER!!! I can't even tell you how difficult it was to get over, no one would let me over! Here I am, not able to get my truck to go more then 10 mph, smoke flowing from the hood, flashers on, and all the Cali drivers are blowing by me in every lane at 70 mph, pissed off at me, because I was putting a huge damper on their day by slowing them down! There was no way I was going to risk those horses by just cutting someone off to get over! After what seemed like an eternity, some kind soul finally slowed down enough to let me get over. I get to the shoulder, and the guys tell A to get the fire extinguisher out and be prepared. The shoulder was barely wide enough for the trailer, and the cars flying by were making me a nervous wreck, not to mention the truck was still smoking! All I was envisioning was the truck and trailer going up in flames, my worst nightmare! We were telling the guys that we thought it was a transmission issue, but in the heat of the moment and situation, we weren't sure. All we knew is that we lost power and were overheating. D asks us how far we were from the next exit. It was not safe sitting where we were. I was picturing a vehicle just slamming into the back of the horse trailer. The sign said the next exit was 3/4 mile up. D told us just to get to that exit and somewhere safe, even if it damaged the truck more. We climb back into the truck, A still has the fire extinguisher, and I put the truck in 2nd gear and creep up the freeway at 4 mph (that is as fast as it would go), praying that the truck didn't catch on fire. What seemed like an hour later, we get off the exit and I was hoping for a gas station parking lot, but bad luck again, it was a residential street with no gas stations in sight. I had to pull over into the bike lane, with 4 more lanes of traffic. We get out and D says that they would try to turn around. He was going to call the Ford dealer to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, A was on her phone trying to find someone she knew with a one ton dually that we could borrow to get us the rest of the way to Scottsdale. (A is from Cali, and knows a lot of people there!) The really bad news was both A and I had to go to the bathroom badly, with no place to go. This really sucks when you don't know when you will even get the opportunity to be able to go. We would have gone in the horse trailer, but it was full and no room behind the last horse!

A couple hours later, A finally found someone with a truck. As we were waiting for the replacement truck, we had to open the drop down windows of the horse trailer so we could water the horses. We were on a very busy residential street with a lot of traffic, and of course no one will slow down. So A was climbing on the little lip of the wheel well of the horse trailer, hoping that she wouldn't slip and fall, while I waited for the stop light to turn red so there would be little traffic, then I would run buckets of water to her. As soon as the cars came, I ran back behind the trailer. We did this 6 times. Think of the old video game, Frogger. That is exactly what it was like, but instead of frogs as targets, we had humans. Not exactly safe, but what else are you to do when traffic doesn't care that there is a vehicle broke down on the side of the road with horses? Did you know that not even ONE vehicle stopped the entire time we sat on this street to ask if we were okay or if we needed help? And 3 cops also drove by! (We were on this street for at least 2 1/2-3 hours) Nope, NOT ONE. If I was back in my home state, someone would have stopped within minutes. Hmmm.... makes one wonder. (I'm obviously a little frustrated about the whole rude, obnoxious behavior of the Cali driver's situation.......)

The tow truck finally came, and we unhooked the trailer. The tow truck hauled the truck away and we waited for the replacement truck. Within minutes the replacement truck was there, we hooked up the trailer, got in and asked the driver to please take us to a bathroom. But, once we pulled off the curb, the driver realized her brakes weren't stopping the trailer. She was not happy. She just had her brakes done on her truck a few days before. She could not haul us to Scottsdale with her truck, but she said she would get us there, someway or somehow!! She pulled over into a parking lot way up the road, which thankfully had a gas station and a bathroom! She called a good friend of hers and said she needed to borrow their truck. So again, we had to unhook the trailer from the replacement truck, but there was a problem. The hitch was somehow jammed on the ball and we could not get the trailer off her truck. The 2nd replacement truck was there and at least 5 or 6 of her good friends that know how to unhook gooseneck trailers. I think it took at least another hour to get the darn trailer off the 1st replacement truck! A and I were about on our last leg and didn't know how much more of this we could take. I was really feeling sick, and we still hadn't slept, it was 80 + degrees out and we felt so bad for the horses. And the guys never turned around to help us. Since they were driving a semi, it is not an easy vehicle to maneuver in residential areas. So we were left to deal with this situation on our own. But finally we were able to get the trailer unhooked and onto the 2nd replacement truck! We got back on the road around 6:30 that evening.

We met up with the guys in the semi at the Arizona border and got into Scottsdale around 1:30 Saturday morning. We unloaded the horses, filled up water buckets, dropped the trailer and went to find the house we rented. By the time we get to the gated community that the house was in, it was 3:00 a.m. D enters the code to the gate. Gate doesn't open. He does this over and over, pulls out his paperwork and finally gets a security person on the intercom. She won't let us in. She said that if the code doesn't work, we have to go find somewhere else to stay. Really? We just had a 38 hour trip, we were exhausted, I was really sick and we all just wanted sleep! At 3:30 a.m., D decided to see if he could find another entrance to the development. He calls us and says he found one. We pull up behind him, he enters the code and the gate opens! By the time we get to the house, unload our luggage and get into bed, it is 4:00 a.m. We sleep for 4 hours and are back at the show grounds to feed horses and to start unpacking the trailers. We worked until 7:00 p.m.

A couple days later, we found out what was wrong with our truck. The truck is a 2006 Ford F350 one ton dually with 87,000 miles on it. We take very good care of our trucks and they get serviced all the time. The popping sound we heard was the oil cooler, which spread contaminants throughout the truck. The engine didn't show any damage on the computer, but with all the oil that came out while we were broke down, the dealer said they were afraid that if we just replaced everything that was contaminated but not the engine, that we could/would have some engine problems on the way home. So basically the cost of repairing the damage and replacing the engine would cost almost as much as the truck is worth. The owner's of our farm decided to just buy a new truck. So we got a new 2011 Ford F450 dually, which was delivered to us the last weekend of the show!

The new F450! Lovin' it!

All this and the show hadn't even started yet. To be continued...........