[GasHog396]

I've been involved with several misadventures, but the best one was in '89 while on vacation in Alaska, with my father, while driving a '71 Dodge van (it has a Chevy motor, but that's another story) and pulling a 22 ft travel trailer. As we were on our way home to Florida, 4600 miles away, we heard a loud bang about 100 or 200 miles into the Yukon territory. We pulled over to the side of the road to try and figure out what was going on. The van was running and handling fine so we took a walk around the trailer. As we came around to the right side of the trailer, from the back, we saw the problem. The rear axel was sitting way too far back in the wheel well. The front half of the leaf spring on the rear axel had broken off!!! Huh oh, now what? We are 300 miles from the nearest town that 'may' have trailer parts, but for a 15 year old trailer? Poking around inside the van and trailer, we found a three foot piece of a 2x4, a three foot piece of a 4x4, and some 3 inch nails, all of which we had picked up during the previous 3 months in Alaska. (I can thank dad for sharing that gene that tells you "HEY!!! that could be handy some day". Mom calls it the BDG {bad dad gene}. Its think it's closely related to the PRG {pack rat gene}, which I seem to be a carrier of, but dad is totally afflicted). We notched the 4x4 with a chainsaw and then nailed the two pieces of wood together. The notch was for the axel to sit in. After jacking the trailer up, we wedged the new 'spacer-spring' into place. Then, we attached a heavy piece of chain around the front axel that was still good, and then wrapped it back around the rear axel to pull it forward and to hold it in place. We dropped the weight back on to the axels, and we were off. All done in less than 60 minutes. On the way back, we had a little problem finding a new spring (we can have one here in two weeks). Oh well, onward we pushed, all the way home to Tampa, all 5000+ miles of it (we went through Ohio to visit relatives). All that way on a couple of chunks of wood and some nails we had found. It wore the outside edge of the tire pretty good, but is was no worse for wear other than that. When we got home, we found boat springs to fit that were $14 each. Better than the $150 for the travel trailer springs. My dad now carries a couple of spare springs when he pulls that anchor.