My Country Peanut – Good News!

Late Friday I drove Peanut to the Welders property for him to assess the scope of work. His name is Dwayne and he owns D&L Custom Fabrication and Mobile Welding Located in Marmora, Ontario. I did a quick google map view to see what kind of ride we would be in for. Dirt roads, narrowing roads, one lane roads, uneven terrain and big ass potholes – this was the ride of my life and my first “long” trip with Peanut. If the aluminium piece holding the frame together could make it through all that then maybe it would have been ok… but who wants to take that chance? NOT ME!

Since the street is a dead end road and I accidentally missed his driveway I had to do a U-turn – not so easy with a trailer but I found the next driveway and started to work on backing Peanut up (forward, back, forward, back … you know how it goes). I had sent Dwayne a quick text saying I’d be a few minutes later as I missed the driveway and he said “I’ll be there in a minute with my 4 wheel to help turn you around”. He came down a minute later and saw me working on turning around and said “did you know there’s a roundabout 100 meters up the road?” HAHAHAHA of course there is. So I went right up to the roundabout. Turned left into his very long very uneven (in the sticks) driveway and there we were. Another 10 minutes later she was backed into his workshop.

He said “you can pick the trailer up Sunday” which was exciting. I did not expect him to work on it over the weekend as he is a Monday to Friday 9-5 business. But he did and Sunday she was done and now classified as ROADWORTHY (Happy Dance). He welded two plates on to the steal frame one on the front and one on the back. He said Peanut has some good years ahead of her and if anything else was to come up he would be more than happy to work on her again. We discussed undercoating which would be the next task to complete. This will help preserve the steal.

• 

• 

At a cost of $140 and a 6 pack of beer Peanut was done.

I got a lot more experience driving with the trailer this weekend which was great. I am slowly understanding the steering while backing into the driveways. It only took me 12 minutes to get the trailer down the driveway Sunday vs 40 minutes the first time – mind you I didn’t park Peanut on her pad as it was late and I still had a 2 hour drive ahead of me. So I went “straight” back. There was a lot more forward, back, forward, back that took place – my neighbours are getting use to it and ignore me now HA!

I invested in some trailer tow mirrors that would help me to see to the end of the trailer which would be beneficial for backing up and driving down the highways. Well… turns out they are pieces of garbage… the clips do not stay tight and the shimmy of the car had them falling off as well as the actual mirror moving from where it was positioned. So they were super useless. Those will likely be going back since I’m not paying for crap.

• 

• 

All in all it was a great weekend! Peanut is good to go. I have some minor things to work on still. I want to add some shoe storage so that I don’t have to worry about them sitting on the ground in the dogs space. I also want to adjust the tires and get the little covers for the tire air pieces (which had come off). I also want to cap off the secondary line to the propane tank as I do not need more than one not having a furnace to run.

Right now the only little … not so little… thing holding us back from a trip is that the trailer parks are not allowing people to stay short term and they do not have public restroom and showers open. This is an issue as Peanut only has a porta-potty for emergencies. I don’t know about you but not showering is a no-go situation. You can only sponge bath so many times before you feel you need a real shower. Upside is I do have family in the East Coast and if Peanut comes for a trip there is places for her to stay and showers that can be had. Downside… we might not make it to Nova Scotia. But that just means 2022 road trip (if Covid will EVER GO AWAY).

I’m continuing to stay positive. I will be going to PEI and New Brunswick (with or without Peanut) in August dependent on park restrictions and availability. With Peanut would definitely be a lot more fun.

Stay tuned for more updates in the weeks to come. 28 – 30 more days left until vacation!

🙂