Hauling Hiccups (The Funny-in-Retrospect Kind)

Hauling horses in the northeast can be problematic to say the least. The roads are narrow, driveways and parking lots tight, and then there’s the traffic…

I found myself in more truck-and-trailer trouble there than anywhere else that I’ve lived. I can definitively say that hauling horses with my large trailer back east was miserable, but since misery loves company, I was thrilled when my best friend (you may know her as the Courtney half of OR) came back from a horse show in the Midwest – land of wide roads and large parking lots – towing her very own misery wagon!

Resplendent with matching parkway-unfriendly sized trucks and living quarters horse trailers, we hit the road from North Salem, NY to a quaint town in Massachusetts for a weekend jumping clinic. The 1.5-hour drive through idyllic northeastern towns quickly degraded into a three-hour white-knuckle excursion complete with an [angry] police escort while backing off a one lane bridge, innumerable hand gestures from passersby, and the admiration of a group at a gas station who thought our horses were circus performers.  We had never been more relieved to reach a destination as we were when we finally unloaded our horses at the clinic facility, and thinking the most difficult part of our journey was solidly behind us had us in a celebratory frame of mind. Traveling together with our geldings in tow, we concurred, was what it was all about!

Despite a couple of headaches, with the horses safely tucked into their stalls for the evening, we remained unscathed and ready for the most anticipated part of our weekend; camping out of our lovely living quarters trailers at a charming RV park described on the internet as a bucolic mountain lake. Never ones to be unprepared, we had called ahead to ensure there were two oversized RV spots next to one another. Letting the GPS take the reins, we dutifully followed as she instructed us to turn into a residential section of town. We continued to take her bad advice when told to blindly turn left onto the steepest hill we’d ever seen. By then, we were so committed that we dropped our trucks into first gear, pushed the pedals to the floor, said a prayer, and persevered through low power lines and rogue tree limbs. We did finally doubt the GPS when the road plateaued and we did not see a grand RV park, but rather what appeared to be a wooded campground. There was no possibility of turning around, so we parked and inquired with the gate attendant. “Oh, you’re in the right place,” she said (We were?), “Don’t worry, you can easily get turned around and parked once you’re inside.” Hungry, stressed, and – finally – relieved, we paid and headed into the abyss.

While there were, technically, many large campers inside the park, most had been parked there prior to the growth of the surrounding forest, and it would have taken nothing short of a full-blown logging expedition to extract any of them at that point. As we attempted to formulate a plan, we discovered that between us and our “extra large” parking slots were a series of impossibly tight turns, numerous trees with low branches, a fence, and a plethora of lawn ornaments (most notably, a friendly garden gnome). After hours of 30-point turns, a single tear of frustration, limbing a few trees, unearthing a tremendous ant’s nest, uprooting and moving a split-rail fence, rearranging some gnomes, becoming the evening entertainment for the trailer court residents, and politely declining several offers of help from well-meaning young men who had never pulled a trailer but could clearly do it better than us women even with no experience, we were home free. Finally, we found ourselves wedged into our respective spots well after dark. A glass of wine and a cold meal had never tasted so good, and it turned out we had even made some friends, as we were invited to the Saturday night pig roast by multiple neighbors the next day!

I am a cursed horse hauler. The horses and vehicles always arrive safely, but the path from Point A to Point B is usually somewhat harried. From stop-and-go traffic on a steep mountain to an electric jack that blew a fuse when my trailer was halfway off my truck leaving me stranded at a show, I subscribe to the Murphy’s Law of hauling: if it can happen, it has happened or will happen to me…

But sometimes I do it to myself. In 2012, I purchased a brand new 36-foot living quarters horse trailer while at a three-week horse show in the Midwest. Near the end of the show, it became apparent that Hurricane Sandy was heading toward the east coast, and straight through my route back home. As soon as my last class was finished, I packed up and hit the road with the intent to beat the storm. Aside from my rig and the countless tree removal crews headed toward the northeast, the roads were fairly unpopulated and the drive was easy. Strangely, even with a hurricane barreling toward me, I was only concerned about one thing…

At the end of my long driveway in North Salem, New York, stood two large stone pillars, and I wasn’t convinced that physics would actually allow my truck and trailer entry. The twelve-hour drive felt like it only took three, as I dreaded arriving at 3am with no light, no help, and no idea if I would take the back end of my trailer off while pulling into my driveway. I planned my route so that I would make a left turn into the space between the pillars, allowing myself as much room as possible, and I drove by twice before finally taking the plunge. After a full day of showing followed by the long drive I was exhausted but anxious, and eventually I simply crossed my fingers, swung as wide as I could, and went for it. I cleared the left pillar by about three inches and continued up to the automated gate. With the hard part behind me, I drove through the gate without a thought, and then pulled my truck and trailer straight into a courtyard surrounded by a stone wall. Everyone was safe, I was exhausted, and would deal with the ramifications of that decision later.

And deal with them, I did.  With my rig parked head-in in front of the garage, no one was coming or going until it moved, but after a lot of trial and error, it turned out that the only way to extricate the rig from the driveway was to drive into the back yard and swing it around on the lawn…during a hurricane. I shifted into 4-lo, crossed my fingers again, and promptly sunk both my truck and trailer in the backyard. It sat there until the ground froze a couple of weeks later and was firm enough to get some traction, and when I pulled the trailer back through the automated gate I realized that I was luckier than I thought that night, as in the daylight there was less than an inch of clearance between the gate motors and each side of my trailer. That was the first and last time it ever went through that gate!