The Brakes

Just when the trip was going so well ... some woman in an SUV 1/4 mile ahead of us tried to make a U-turn on I-81 in front of a whole line of traffic.   Needless to say, there was massive screeching of tires, and big rigs flailing this way and that to avoid hitting each other.  Pooh II was at the tail end of the action, but Frank still had to lay on the brakes extremely hard.  The smell of burning brake fluid was everywhere.  But, there were no accidents.  On a Southern California freeway, this would be just another day, but here on I-81 in West Virginia, not so much.

Fast forward 2 hours and we were in Lancaster County PA, looking forward to a couple of restful days in the Amish countryside when we heard a terrible clacking sound in the front wheel area, and then ... horrors ... no brakes.  No brakes, really.  Frank did a masterful job of bringing the 22,000 lb rig to a stop by downshifting, using the emergency brake, and then pulling into a big empty parking lot as we slowly came to a stop.  Whew.  It was truly scary.

A big-rig tow truck wasn't available until the next morning, so we had to spend the night there in the furniture store parking lot.  The evening became a lot more bearable when we discovered an open wifi connection from the coffee shop next door that was closed for the evening.  Voila!  We had internet and Slingbox TV.  Things could have been worse.

So sad

The next morning, we got towed to Anderson's Trucking.  Of course the required parts had to be ordered and wouldn't be delivered until the next day.  This meant one more night on generator power ... this time in the back lot of the repair shop.  No internet that night, but we were so tired we didn't care. 

Spending the night behind Andersons

Linda got a little nervous that the brakes might not get fixed on Friday.  The shop didn't start the job until 2:00 pm.  What if they can't finish?  They are not open on Saturdays. What if they find something else wrong?  Linda was stressing, and knitting as fast as she could.  But they did get it fixed, and we were on our way again Friday afternoon.

The owners of Anderson Garage

In our next post we'll tell about our sightseeing adventures in Lancaster County while we waited for The Brakes to be fixed.  We did have a grand time, after all.