My VCF trip (long)

The Burlington VCF trip was my first VCF. I enjoyed myself immensely. Three cheers for Sellam for putting in the work to organize the thing. I did talk to Sellam a bit about possibly having a VCF central in St. Louis - I want to bring my cherished HP2000/Access system. I refuse to cart that system across the country to either coast, or even to KC :) Sellam, I'll be in touch to discuss some stuff about seeing if we can have a VCF in St. Louis sometime. The hotel (mariott) was wonderful, and it was so great to put a face with the email address on so many of the people I've been talking to here over the years. I will definitely make it to a few more VCF's, but hopefully with less travel problems. Ah yes, so many have asked about "The Great Trailer Incident(tm)". Here's a synopsis of my trip to VCF and what all went wrong - presented here entirely for your amusement and as a lesson so that others (including myself) may avoid my screwball missteps. I left St. Louis on Wednesday the 14th, about 8am. Drove non-stop to Washington PA, about 600 miles and spent the night in the Red Roof. My van was loaded with two HP racks, and in tow was a 5x8 flatbed trailer with two more racks and a few 7906 disc drives. The van and trailer were handling wonderfully. I checked the tires on the van before leaving Saint Louis, but neglected to do that on the trailer. The trailer I had just gotten about 6 or 7 months ago for $500 (because it included a PDP-11/45 on it at no cost). It had driven back to St. Louis from TN just fine then. So anyways... I left Washington PA thursday morning to drive the remaining 600 miles to burlington. I was about an hour or so from burlington, headed east on I-84, just 4 miles from the massachusetts border when the tire blew and disintegrated. I got out an looked and there was a few shreds of rubber on the wheel, the majority of my tire being about 30 feet behind the trailer. Pulled off the highway and pondered if a normal car jack would lift a trailer that was pretty heavily loaded, or how I was going to possibly get to the spare van tire with the van fully loaded, and if that tire might fit the trailer, etc. etc. My adventure had begun. I called AAA and said "I'm not a member, but I'd like to be". They laughed and said they wouldn't sign me up for membership AND place a help call at the same time. How helpful. But they at least said they'd get me the phone number for a service station in my area. I had virtually no cellphone battery left. After getting transferred around to quite a few different service stations, one finally had a human voice instead of an "I'm sorry, we're closed" recording. Cool. Told them I needed someone to come out with a certain tire, and where I was located. They said that because of the location/highway I was on, I HAD to have police come out before they could get out there. Huh? I told the guy I had no cellphone left, and would he please call the police for me. He said sure. Almost two hours later, still no police. What fun. It was around 11pm by then and I was getting pretty testy. So I called information, got the police phone number. They said they weren't located in the area I was in, and would transfer my call to another police station. Click... dead line. This happened about 3 or 4 times. Apparently police stations can't transfer calls without hanging up on people. So next call I got the original police station to give me the phone number for the right police station. Wrote it down and asked him to transfer me... click... hung up on again. So I dialed the other police station directly. Fast busy. Waited a while, fast busy again. This cycle repeats a few times. Finally called the original police station, he transferred me and joy of joys this time it went through. The police officer at the new station politely got all my information, location, etc... then told me that I was talking to the Danbury police, which were on the entire opposite side of the state of connecticut from where I was. They offered to transfer me (ARGH!) to Troop A, who were in my area. The kind people at Troop A said they didn't handle the area I was in, and transfered me to some other Troop (F-Troop I suspect). When the transfer went through, I received a recording "I'm sorry, but our offices are closed. Our normal business hours are..." ARGH!!! So I called the original police station, again told the guy where I was, that I had no battery left, and needed him to get someone out there, then hung up. About an hour later, an officer pulled up behind me and asked what the problem was. I suspect it was too DARK for him to see the SHREDDED TIRE at his feet. I told him I wanted someplace to come out with a tire and replace mine, or tow to a 24 hour service station, etc. He then politely asked why I called the police, that I should have called a towing service. ARGH! That IS how I started out, and the towing service told me to call the police first. What fun. The officer informed me I had two choices. Leave the trailer, and come back in the morning and get it with a new tire, or call for towing. I wasn't going to pay towing to burlington, over an hour away. I couldn't get a close hotel, because I had prepayed with late checkin for the mariott at burlington. I didn't want to leave the trailer on the side of the road. But not because of what the officer said... he asked what was on it (no, I didn't jokingly say 'cocaine'). When I told him "antique computer gear" his eyes got wide and he cautioned me about theives going up and down the highway picking stuff off vehicles/trailers left behind. Of course I told him that I wasn't concerned about general theives... I was concerned about my fellow collectors who may also be driving into burlington along I-84 that night, THEY would certainly stop and pick the trailer clean *GRIN* (just kidding). I decided to leave the trailer, chain it with padlock to the guard rail on the side of the highway, and drive the rest of the way into burlington and deal with it tomorrow. I finally got to the mariott at about 1am or so and the bed never felt so good. The next morning I got up, and drove the van to VCF so I could empty it out and not haul that weight back to the trailer. As I was pushing gear in the front door, I met Sellam and asked him if he could make sure the stuff made it in the rest of the way, that I had a flat tire on 84, and had to go retrieve it - so I'd be late to the show but would be there. Then I went to sears just up the street from the service center, bought a tire, and headed out an hour away on 84 in search of my trailer. Found the trailer, jacked it up, grabbed the rim, and spent about 1/2 hour looking for a service station that would put the new tire on the rim for me. Pulled in to something in studbury? and the mechanic said no problem, fired up his tire machine, and... *POOF*. Showers of sparks everywhere. His machine was not going to be putting tires on rims anytime soon. So, he directed me to another garage a few miles away. They got the tire on the rim just fine. As the mechanic put the tire in the van, I asked "how much do I owe ya?" fully expecting the guy would do it as a freebie, or maybe 5 bucks. No... he wanted 20 bucks - cash only. At this point, money was no object, I was 100 miles away, missing a computer show I drove 1200 miles (one way) to go to. GRRR. Drove back to the trailer, put the tire on and thankfully pulled away. Of course, when I put the tire on I got the bright idea that perhaps I should check the other tire on the trailer too. It was in really bad shape, probably would have gone anytime soon. So I limped back to burlington, van in tow, never exceeding 40 mph cause I didn't want the other tire to blow. A few fellow highway drivers weren't particularly happy with me driving at that speed, and made that point quite clear with various hand gestures wild gesticulations. So when I got to VCF I unloaded the trailer, then dropped the trailer off at sears so they could replace the other tire. Went to VCF and had a total blast!! When I got into VCF, apparently the story of "The Trailer Incident(tm)" had spread like wildfire and grown substantially. I think I overheard one incarnation that involved my trailer being on fire and me being put in jail. Hehee... amazing how a story grows through retelling. Then much of the VCF folks went to Victoria's Station for dinner - where the portions were huge and quite good! I had to leave during dinner to pick up the trailer (Sears closed at 8), but then came back for some good conversation and story swapping with my fellow classiccmp'ers. After dinner I met in the lower parking lot of the marriott with Dan Cohoe, William Donzelli, and Evan Koblentz. Was rather funny to see three vans pull up into an empty parking lot, starting moving a bunch of "big boxes" between them, then all go speeding off. Hummm. I got alot of really great DEC and DG stuff. You would THINK this would be the end of the story. NOT! I had taken four empty HP racks to the show... and confirmed with all four collectors before I left st. louis. Of course, at the show, one of the collectors didn't show up at the show at all, and the other one apparently left before I got there late friday (due to the above). So, I was stuck with two large HP racks, sitting in Sun's building. I couldn't load them back to my van, which was already full (and scheduled to get more at bobs and bills). So I was scurrying around asking Sellam for any ideas for disposal, etc. Finally Dan Cohoe stepped forward to help me out and took both racks. One is still destined to go to the person who wanted it as they aren't too far from Dan C. The other... well... haven't heard from that collector yet :) Dan Cohoe - THANK YOU! I had to leave VCF a little early, because I had gear to pick up from Bob Shannon in Leominster, then more gear to pick up from Bill Dawson in Washington PA on the way back. Stopped at Bobs and loaded up, then headed for Washington PA. After about 120 miles, I noticed I itched. I was getting bug bites. I looked across the dash of the van, and there were flying ants (or something like that) crawling over the entire dash, the seats, my legs, etc. Apparently some of the gear I picked up at VCF or later had a low rent housing project for these bugs going on inside of it. Opening all the windows while going down the highway, and then (later) closing the van up tight at night, seemed to get rid of them. It was pouring down BUCKETS of rain, and I had to pull off the highway several times as visibility approached 10 feet. When I got to Washington we loaded the Reality into the trailer, and inbetween breaks in the rain got it all tied down and ready to roll. As I was laying on the ground underneath the trailer hooking bungee cords up, Bill mentioned to me as an aside "Um, you do realize you're laying in a bed of poisin ivy don't you?". I now have the rashes to prove I did NOT have any idea. I got perhaps 2 miles from Bills house before the trailer started fishtailing wildly. Cool! More fun! So I pulled over again but this time couldn't see anything at all amiss. So, I called Bill, and trouper that he was... he drove up to help. After scratching his head a bit, he stood on the tongue of the trailer and found the problem. A seriously negative amount of tongue weight. We were pretty sure we had distributed the weight well (especially with the 11/34 up front), but, apparently not as the power supply for the reality is built into the bottom of the rack, and it is VERY heavy. So, I turned on the emergency flashers and followed Bill to a nearby closed gas station that had a large covered area. We spent the next hour and a half taking everything off the trailer, re-organizing how it would go back on, retarping, tie-down, and re-bungee'ing everything. Finally I was ready to continue home. The thing drove great on the highway now and I settled in for a long, relaxing drive back towards home - st. louis. There was really heavy fog around PA, and just as I was settling down into "watching the miles tick by" mode..... Suddenly I see a large piece of scrap metal on the road in front of me. It came out of the fog, was no way to avoid it. I patiently braced for the dragging of metal, and my patience was rewarded with a wonderful shower of red sparks going up both sides of the van, from the piece of metal being drug under the van. Cool! All this fun, and a fireworks show for free to boot! The metal looked like a piece of aluminum siding all crunched up, or maybe part of a corrugated tin roof... something like that. I continued to drive for about 500 feet, because the metal piece looked pretty small/flexible and I figured it would work it's way out from under the van in just a few feet. It didn't. So I pulled over on the shoulder and sat there for a minute, contemplating what egregious sin I had comitted in a different life that merited this amount of trouble. I was trying to figure out just how (un)safe it was going to be, crawling under a van in the dark, on a fast highway, trying to unwedge a piece of metal debris from under the van. To my suprise, when I got under the van, there was no metal, and no damage, in sight. Apparently the metal HAD come out just when I pulled over to the shoulder of the road. The rest of the trip home to St. Louis was, in fact, totally uneventful :) Again, it was really great to meet the folks there at the show. Everyone was most friendly, helpful, and it was just a plain blast to put a face with the name, and just sit and chat with people about this hobby. Hopefully, people won't hold my grumpy attitude the first day at the show against me, now that they see just what my thursday night/friday morning was like! Well, I'm off to sort through old email, the business cards I collected at the show... and try to somehow get back to restoring some more of the machines in my collection. VCF St. Louis anyone? Oh - by the way - if I had to do it all over again, with the same problems as above, I would. VCF was THAT fun. However, next time I will be taking along a spare tire for the trailer :> Regards, Jay West --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]