I went to Brad’s on a Friday night. The weather was horrible, blowing snow and zero degree temperatures. We had to dig the car hauler out of drifted snow. Did I mention we were going to pull it with an Avalanche? MISTAKE! We drove the car hauler back to his house and the damn trailer was causing the truck to sway back and fourth. I think that’s when I first questioned the viability of this effort. We made it home and went to sleep. Five am next morning we get up and start on our journey. I believe it was -10 degrees outside and the highway was a solid sheet of ice. Brad drove the truck ~50mph. If he went any faster the trailer would yank us all around the place. A quick stop at McDonald’s for breakfast. I really questioned whether we should continue. Brad is an eternal optimist and said, “common man, don’t be a wuss.” Something like that ;-) Jake was also along for the ride and packed himself in the back of the truck.

The next fun thing that happened was that Brad’s windshield washer fluid froze. We could barely see out of the front of the truck. We had to stop at rest stops along 80/90 to clean off the windshield. We would go into the rest stop and grab a big cup of hot water to pour on the windshield. Jake decided he needed to see out the side and poured at least a few cups of water on the side window. It was so cold outside the water Jake threw on his window froze in this really neat frozen waterfall effect. We also noticed another problem; one of Brad’s tires was losing a lot of air… F**K! So we put air in the tire every stop and poured the water. What should have been a 2 hour trip lasted 5 hours one way.

We finally arrive. An older man meets us at the door. He walked us back to the warehouse and showed us to the machines. Both in great shape. I had called this guy 3 days before we left to make sure people would be there to help us load. My Cyber Sled game weighed 900 pounds. No one but the old man was there. Luckily a few guys showed up to pickup a juke box they had won on eBay. They gave us a hand. We loaded the machines and we ready to go.

The trip back was a little better. I think it had warmed to 20 degrees and the roads were better. Brad didn’t want to drive 55 though. At one point we were going ~70mph and went over a hill. There was a semi ahead of us that was going really slow. Brad mashed on the brakes. When he did this the trailer wasn’t going to let us stop and it started pushing the truck right and left. I thought we were screwed. Brad was white as a ghost. We got lucky and slowed just enough.

We got back to my house 17 hours later and unloaded the game. One of the monitors worked fine, the other didn’t. I turned the machine on outside and heard a pop, probably not good >.> Plus when Brad, Jake, and I were loading the machine in the trailer we needed to set it down. The machine was a foot away from the floor and I told the guys I had it, forgetting it was 900 lbs. They let go and I dropped it, oops again. I bought a new Well-Gardner monitor and it worked great. I tore the machine completely down and cleaned it very well. I had to re-wire a couple of things that had been hacked, but all was good.