Helen and David ripped up the bricks in their driveway and put in a nice new concrete one, freeing up more than 300 square feet of bricks. We've been thinking of making a patio, and decided the trip to Annapolis was worth the offer of free bricks.
So to celebrate Father's Day we rented a trailer and loaded it with 5000 lbs of bricks to take home. Austin and David managed to encase the bricks on the flatbed trailer with an impressive wooden box of sorts. Besides having to load 1000 bricks in the 95 degree heat on Saturday, the job wasn't too bad... until we hit the road on Father's day.
Thankfully we got an early start so there weren't a ton of cars on the highway when the trailer started violently swaying, shaking the truck. Thankfully Austin was able to remain in control of the truck and maneuver it gingerly over to the side of the road without any damage to any of us or the equipment. We were only about half an hour outside of Annapolis so we turned around and limped back to town on back roads, sick to our stomachs, hoping the trailer wouldn't try to turn us all over again. (It didn't.)
We weren't sure whether we would have to unload all the bricks back into the garage and leave for home with the trailer unloaded, or if we had other options. Thankfully, Austin was able to reach his boss and an excavator they work with who both routinely pull and load heavy trailers, who advised us to shift the weight on the trailer to get more tongue weight on the truck, and to shift some of the bricks to the back of the truck.
After two hours of agonizing in the 95 degree heat and the sun playing stack the bricks again, we hit the road again... this time, the back road back to our house so we wouldn't need to drive at highway speeds and could make a quick pull-off if necessary. It turned out not to be necessary, thankfully. It was a long, slow trip home (Austin is proud to say we passed two vehicles that were going slower than us, the whole four and half hour trip!). And then when we got home we had 5000 lbs of bricks to unload (which takes a little more than an hour and a half in 90 degree heat with two people working).
In case you were wondering, I'm not sure this was Austin's idea of a relaxing Father's Day.
