The Stills Day 3, Toronto to Dunsmore, PA
RV servicing 101: It's a massive pain. I left at 10am with our guitar tech, Frenchie, to bring in the RV to a place in Bolton, which is about 45 mins north of Toronto. We get there, explain the problem and the guy says they can't fix it, so they'll give us a new one. Alright, no big deal, we kind of expected that, so we spent about 2 hours transferring all our stuff and doing paperwork and we were on our way.
We didn't get very far. About 200 yards from the RV shop, we hit a bump on the road and the trailer popped off the hitch! In traffic! NOT GOOD!! Fortunately, the safety chains worked and the emergency brake on the trailer kicked in and we made it to the shoulder without killing anyone, which was a legitimate possibility. It was pretty freaky.
We went out to look at it, and nothing was damaged, so we used our own raw power to life the loaded trailer back onto the hitch, fixed all the wiring, re-secured the damn thing, but we couldn't reset the emergency brake, so the trailer wouldn't move at all. I spent about an hour on the phone with U-Haul HQ and the local rep, CAA, independent mechanics, etc... and no one was able to come out and help us in a reasonable time and/or price range. Then we noticed a truck shop a little ways down the street and figured, hey, they work on trucks, they can fix a trailer. At least they could if they were cool people. They politely refused to even look at it.
At that point we were about 3 hours behind schedule, and we still had to do a border crossing today, so we called another shop to ask some questions and basically figured it wasn't the end of the world if we dragged the trailer back down the road to the RV place, as they were our last hope. They were cool, helpful and, most importantly, successful. It took all of 5 mins to sort it out, and they didn't even have the right tools to do it. A little resourcefulness can go a long way... Finally, we could get back on the road.
So we make our next stop in Mississauga where we had to stop by Simple Plan's warehouse to pick up Frenchie's tool kit (he usually works for them), and we get back on the highway to go pick up the guys at the hotel, where they've been waiting in the lobby for hours, so we can make our way to the US.
That didn't last long. I had to take the 427 south, and guess what? It was closed and I got rerouted north. Not good. I get off the highway and get back on south, but the road ends up being blocked so we're stuck in traffic. We were stuck so long that the road eventually reopened and we actually made some headway. So, at 4:45 pm we finally get back, when we expected to be back at about 12:30pm.
We hit the road, manage to get out of Toronto in decent time and get to Buffalo to do immigration, which was remarkably painless, almost too easy. That was the bonus of the day I suppose, because we figured if anything was going to go wrong, it would be at the border. So we cross, we're on our way and we stop for food, at a Tim Horton's ironically, and the stupid atm machine won't read the bank cards so we can't get the cash we need. Somehow we worked it out, got some food and right now we're on the road to Dunsmore, PA where we'll spend the night before playing NYC tomorrow. Nothing says class like the roadside Super 8...
We didn't get very far. About 200 yards from the RV shop, we hit a bump on the road and the trailer popped off the hitch! In traffic! NOT GOOD!! Fortunately, the safety chains worked and the emergency brake on the trailer kicked in and we made it to the shoulder without killing anyone, which was a legitimate possibility. It was pretty freaky.
We went out to look at it, and nothing was damaged, so we used our own raw power to life the loaded trailer back onto the hitch, fixed all the wiring, re-secured the damn thing, but we couldn't reset the emergency brake, so the trailer wouldn't move at all. I spent about an hour on the phone with U-Haul HQ and the local rep, CAA, independent mechanics, etc... and no one was able to come out and help us in a reasonable time and/or price range. Then we noticed a truck shop a little ways down the street and figured, hey, they work on trucks, they can fix a trailer. At least they could if they were cool people. They politely refused to even look at it.
At that point we were about 3 hours behind schedule, and we still had to do a border crossing today, so we called another shop to ask some questions and basically figured it wasn't the end of the world if we dragged the trailer back down the road to the RV place, as they were our last hope. They were cool, helpful and, most importantly, successful. It took all of 5 mins to sort it out, and they didn't even have the right tools to do it. A little resourcefulness can go a long way... Finally, we could get back on the road.
So we make our next stop in Mississauga where we had to stop by Simple Plan's warehouse to pick up Frenchie's tool kit (he usually works for them), and we get back on the highway to go pick up the guys at the hotel, where they've been waiting in the lobby for hours, so we can make our way to the US.
That didn't last long. I had to take the 427 south, and guess what? It was closed and I got rerouted north. Not good. I get off the highway and get back on south, but the road ends up being blocked so we're stuck in traffic. We were stuck so long that the road eventually reopened and we actually made some headway. So, at 4:45 pm we finally get back, when we expected to be back at about 12:30pm.
We hit the road, manage to get out of Toronto in decent time and get to Buffalo to do immigration, which was remarkably painless, almost too easy. That was the bonus of the day I suppose, because we figured if anything was going to go wrong, it would be at the border. So we cross, we're on our way and we stop for food, at a Tim Horton's ironically, and the stupid atm machine won't read the bank cards so we can't get the cash we need. Somehow we worked it out, got some food and right now we're on the road to Dunsmore, PA where we'll spend the night before playing NYC tomorrow. Nothing says class like the roadside Super 8...
posted by t. at 1:59 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home