hey san antonio-my weekend from hell!

[paul cass]

hey guys
no one can say that my trips are routine. loaded up to head for san antonio friday afternoon and stopped on the way out for fuel. small cloud drifted over and it started to rain. bet it didn't cover more than a quarter mile radius. and i'm in the middle of it. drive off and go about 200 yards and its dry. to late, as i'm wet and so is the truck, trailer, and cobra. should have realized that this was an omen for what was to come. detoured just south of san antonio to see a guy who called for me to look at his wrecked cobra. about a minute after i stopped another biiiiiiiiiiig black cloud drifted over and then the bottom fell out. took off and headed for san antonio and at times had to drive at no more than 15 mph. drove in this storm for close to 40 miles. got to my in laws and it was sprinkling so that took care of things for friday night. the cobra was drenched. as a matter of fact its still drying out today. called bob, but turned out he gave me a number that had one number out of place. senior moment i guess. anyway, someone got an intersting message on their voice mail. finally talked to bob later friday night. we decided to amend saturdays plans based on the forcast. checked the weather when i got up saturday morning about 8:30. weathermen(?) predicted severe storms by 9:30. called bob and he said that it was raining at his house so we decided to cancel the cruise and check back later. it was sunny. hmmmmmm. by 11 there was still no rain. checked the weather forcast and it showed that the storm went north not south. still sunny outside so i decided to take a cruise up 281. nice drive and went about 35 miles and then came back to the house. later bob and i decided to go to the dragstrip. seemed a little pricey at $20, and no discout for seniors! they had all kinds of cars running, including two jet cars. the jet cars ran in the 6's at over 200 mph. had 2 nitro alterds (sp) that were trying to break into the 6's. on their first pass one of the cars veered into the wall right off the starting line. probably hit the wall at over 60 mph. flipped over and landed on its role cage and slid down the wall a ways and then fell off the wall and landed upside down in the track. slid a ways with the engine still running. the car caught a wheel and then flipped back upright and slid to a stop. the fuel cell was broken and then with the fuel leaking out it caught fire. as the flames spread no one did anything. the driver pulled his fire suppression system but nothing happened. now the driver was engulfed in flames. finally he got out. it was like the key stone kops. no one had any fire equipment. finally, after anywhere from 3-5 minutes an old fire truck showed up. the hoses were tangled, the firemen slipped and fell, one sliding into the fire, the pump on the truck quit running and in the meantime the car burnt to the ground. felt sorry for the driver. took about 80 minutes to clean up the mess. by 1 am they still had about 20 cars to run. bob and i decided to call it a night. still no sign of rain. woke up sunday morning to find it raining. crap!!!! finally around 10 it quit. called bob and told him i would find out what was going on with the car show. couldn't get an answer on the phone number listed so by noon the roads were pretty dry so i drove to the car show site. saw a guy in the parking lot in a truck pulling a model t. he pulled up and rolled his window down and said that thye had rescheduled for july 11. sh**!!!!!!!!! mad, i drive back to the house and load up the cobra to head home. my wife and her sister have some things they want to do so its about 4 hours before we leave. in the meantime it rains on the cobra-again! finally, we head home. about 97 miles from corpus i start to feel a vibration. i see an exit about 1/8 mile ahead that i was going to pull off on to check things out. then boom! one of the trailer tires blows. i coast to the exit and pull over. i find that the passenger side trailer tire has desinigrated and the fender is destroyed. this was an almost new tire. takes about 30 minutes, using my small floor jack and jack stands to raise the trailer to get the tire off. as i start to put the spare on i notice that it has a small tear in the side wall. on it goes anyway. i head home at 50 mph. we arrive at my shop around 9 pm with no more problems. whew. a couple of weeks ago i injured my big toe teaching tennis. it had slowly gotten better. not any more. i was using my 2 ton floor jack to un hook my trailer. i dropped the jack on the injured toe. son of a #*&#! fianlly made it back to the house and was in no mood to post on this site. i told my wife that the only good thing about the trip was that i didn't have to go to work on monday. long story, but that was my weekend!
paul
ps bob, i'm converting to dual axels before the next trip