Saturday morning, as Kindra and I were stuck on the ramp at Prague Lake with a boat we couldn’t load, I was deeply regretting a decision made one Saturday morning three years ago.
That was the day I decided to buy a locking pin for the trailer hitch on my pickup,
I know what you’re thinking: “Hmmm. That hardly sounds like the kind of decision that would leave a person wracked with regret three years later.”
And I would agree with you, under most circumstances. Except here’s what happened:
I have trailers that require different sized balls on the hitch, so on that fateful Saturday, I bought a three-way hitch and a nifty theft-deterring locking pin to hold it in place.
As needed, I would unlock the pin, flip the hitch to whatever ball I needed, then lock it back. And no one would be able to steal my hitch.
It sounded like a good idea at the time, and continued to sound like a good idea right up until last Friday.
Kindra and I planned to go fishing Saturday morning, so Friday evening I got a few things ready on the little Bass Buster boat and backed up the pickup.
The plan was to hitch the boat, throw in a few things on Saturday morning and be on our way to the lake,
Only problem was that the ball that was in place on the hitch was for the utility trailer, not the boat.
But hey. No biggie. I’ll unlock the pin, flip the hitch over and all will be well.
Except that the lock was seized. The key would turn, but the lock itself wouldn’t budge and no amount of WD-40 would made a difference. It wasn’t coming off.
The only realistic solution appeared to be cutting it off with a grinder. Except I didn’t have a grinder and the stores that sell them were already closed. Again: no problem.
Again: no problem.
The Bass Buster is a small boat - shorter than 10 feet and narrow enough to fit between the wheel wells in the pickup.
Kindra and I should be able to load it.
And, sure enough we did. There were a couple of false starts, but we finally slid it home and congratulated ourselves on our ingenuity.
It unloaded easily at the lake and I was optimistic that we would have no trouble loading it when the time came. Who needs a trailer, anyway?
Well, we do, it seems.
Perhaps we were tired. Perhaps it was the angle of the boat ramp. Perhaps the boat had taken water into its pontoons and was heavier. Perhaps it was because the boat was wet. Perhaps it was the phase of the moon. Perhaps it was all of the above.
The thing that was for sure was that we couldn’t load it. No matter how many times we tried.
After a bit, two good-hearted fishermen offered to help. The four of us loaded it ok, although one remarked: “This thing’s as heavy as all get-out.”
And, indeed. It sure seemed it was.
We pulled up the ramp at about 11:30 a.m., headed home with the Bass Buster securely tied in the back.
By 2:30, we were home and I was the proud owner of a new grinder.
The seized-up locking pin? It was cut off and thrown in the trash.
Where it belonged.