BBFO 2011 - Day 5

Monday: January 30, 2011

What a day of events.  I wished I had bought some lotto tickets.

The day started out pretty normal.  We had breakfast at the truck stop and then headed east towards home.  The weather was perfect, but the forecast for tomorrow was bleak.  Every thing was going well until just pasted Comstock, John called out that he had a problem with his trike.  At first, I did not hear him say anything on the radio, so Doug had to chase us down.  We turned around and found John on the side of the road.  He said he lost power, and we quickly figured it was something to do with the rear drive.  The bottom line was that the trike was not going anywhere under it's own power.

A plan was hatched that Doug will leave not and head for home to get a truck and trailer ready to bring back to pick up John.  I would stay with John until the wrecker arrived, and then I would head for home and come back tomorrow with Doug.  John would have the wrecker take him to a motel where he would wait for Doug and I to return.  Bill and Dick would just head for home since there was nothing they could do, so there was no need for them to just hang around.

Every thing was was going as planned until we got John's trike on the wrecker and I pulled out to head for home.  One hundred yards down the road I lost my rear drive.  Turns out I had exactly the same problem as John.  Now instead of having one trike down we have two.  A new plan was devised.  The wrecker would take John to a motel and drop off his trike, and then return to pick mine up.  Several phone calls were made, and a bigger truck and trailer were found, so now we had a way to get the trikes back home.  John and I eventually ended up in a Motel 6, where we just kicked back to wait on our rescuers. 

John and I did grab some lunch at the Whataburger next door to the motel, and then we walked down to a little store to get some snacks and beer.  The rest of the day we just hung out in the room watching TV and playing on our computers.  Later neither of us felt like going out to eat so we ordered pizza.  That evening Doug had called us and stated that he and a friend, Chris, decided to head out to get us that night.  They figured they would arrive around midnight.  I went and got them a room, and around 9:00 PM John and I called it a night.  This is where the fun started.

At around 10:00 PM I woke up feeling a bit nauseous.  I figured it was my indigestion acting up because of the burger and pizza.  A short time later I knew it was something more since I was praying to Ralf, the name I designated for our toilet.  This continued on all night long.  It became apparently fairly quickly that I had food poisoning.  John was not sick, and since we have eaten the same thing, I couldn't figure out what had made me sick.  It really didn't make any difference because I felt like crap.  I felt bad for keeping John up all night by running to the restroom every 15 minutes, but there was little else I could do.

Doug and Chris did arrive around midnight, so we gave them their room key, and we decided to head out early in the morning.  Around 5:00 AM, I started to feel a little bit better, but what that actually means is I wasn't throwing up every 15 minutes.  I was not looking forward to the 7 hours ride home.  This is when it really starts to get fun.  About the time I was feeling a bit better, my hands start to itch.  It quickly spread to my arms legs and back.  I turned on a light, and now I was covered in hives.  I have never had hives in my life, and now I am covered with them.  Doug and Chris showed up a short time later and they ran to Walmart and got me some bendryl.  I took a dose of that and it appeared to work.  Of course the side effect is I could hardly keep my eyes open.

The rest of the trip is short and easy.  The bikes got loaded with little help from me, well I guess I should say with no help from me.  The guys decided to get some breakfast before heading out.  I decided it wasn't in anyone's best interest that I should eat anything, so I just stayed in the truck and slept.  I ended up sleeping halfway to Houston.  I made arrangements with Liz to meet me at a local service station where the guys will drop me off, and they would continue on taking the trikes to the dealer for repairs.

I made it home just in time.  For the next couple of days I felt like crap, but slowly but surely I started feeling better.  It turns out Bill got sick also, and between us we were able to figure out it was the roast gravy we ate at the University on Saturday that made us sick.  It was the only thing the two of us ate that no one else did.

The trip was great.  All the crap, and I mean crap started on the last day, so the trip in itself was a success.  Looking forward to next year.

Next trip it to AZ in April.