by Burt "BS" Levy
Paul Quiniff was nice enough to offer to bring me, my books and gear down for LOG in his brand new, self-built, self-engineered, fiberglass monocoque Lotus trailer. Paul had built and used a similar trailer for years, but this new one was bigger, lighter and prettier, and had a pop-top mounted on hydraulic cylinders so it could raise a foot and a half so he can work on his Elan racer or Formula Ford race car in the shade and out of the weather, but while standing up straight and with lots of sunlight and flow-through ventilation. Very clever, and very nicely engineered. But the trip to LOG was going to be the first really long tow with it, and therein lies the tale.
About 150 miles out of Chicago, a trucker pulled up next to us and honked. Now if you're not a pretty girl and a trucker honks at you, there's usually something wrong. And we both thought we'd heard a little "pop" from somewhere behind us a few minutes before, and thought we'd run over something. But we figured the trucker knew something we didn't, so we pulled over, got out and went around back. We were somewhat surprised to find that the latches had flexed open over some rough pavement and the back door (with its clever, monocoque-hull, light weight, built-in ramps) had fallen open and was dragging along behind us, with Paul's Elan more or less staring out the back. Fortunately, nothing had rolled or blown out, so we put it back up (there was a little damage, but not too bad considering) and secured it with a couple of ratchet tie-downs. Paul carries a lot of ratchet tie-downs. He needs to...
So off we went again. And everything seemed fine until about 400 miles later when, as we headed through a construction zone another trucker pulled up to our brand new, just finished, and clever as an Elite monocoque or Elan backbone frame trailer, and started honking and gesticulating wildly. We looked back and forth at each other. But we were in a barricaded-in construction zone and there was no place to pull over. So we looked back in the mirrors to see if we could figure out what was wrong. And it took us maybe thirty or forty seconds to realize: THE WHOLE TOP OF THE TRAILER WAS GONE!
Now you have to understand that the piece that came off was roughly the size or the State of Rhode Island (although much lighter) and we hadn't felt a thing! That's the kind of perspective, on-top-of-things people we are. Anyhow, Paul and I exchanged looks of utter horror and despair, but we had to drive on another 10 minutes before we got out of the construction zone and could finally pull over. Needless to say, it was delightfully sunny inside the trailer now, but the walls were a bit willowy without the roof to hold them together!
While we worked at strapping the walls to each other with ratchet tie-downs (like I said, Paul travels with a LOT of them) we tried to figure out what the @#X@l!! had happened. We noticed that the nuts and washers were missing completely from the front hydraulic cylinders. Now how did that happen? Apparently, the nuts had shaken loose and unthreaded themselves, and once they were off, the front of the roof must have raised up in the wind and once the air got under it, it took off like a kite. A very big kite. And it took two of the hydraulic cylinders along with it!
By that time, a very nice young lady from the highway department had pulled over, and she called around to her highway department friends and managed to locate our trailer roof, (it's pretty easy to spot!) sitting in the median about 12 miles back. Then she helped us get turned around on an access road the construction vehicles use and we headed back. It was somewhere around here that we noticed the very large storm cloud moving in our direction.
We got back to the exit turnaround and headed back, and found a place to pull into the median about 50 yards past our roof. We had to retrieve it and drag it back with a pair of ratchet tie-downs (the tool of 100 uses?) and another set of highway department types were kind enough to stop and help us grunt, heave, lift, fight and wrestle it back into place. Amazingly, there was very little damage (apart from Paul's psyche) and we were able to pop it right back into place. But we needed to somehow tie it down so it wouldn't GO AIRBORNE again. Solution? ratchet tie-downs!!!
So that's why we arrived at LOG late, wet, and with Paul's incredibly clever and lightweight MONOCOQUE Lotus trailer wrapped up like a Christmas present with ratcheting tie-downs!!! I believe we used all he had!