At 7am on a beautiful Sunday morning, I started the car and backed it out of the garage (much to the dismay of my neighbors). I pulled it up to the trailer ramps and stopped to make sure everything was lined-up.
After a quick inspection, I got back in the car and stared at the trailer in front of me. What could go wrong, I thought. Maybe the ramps would slip and the car would fall off, or the frame would bottom-out and get stuck, or I would give it too much gas and wouldn't be able to stop before driving off the front of the trailer, or maybe the brakes would lock up and I'd slide off the front of the trailer. With all those positive thoughts running through my head, I started the engine, pressed the gas pedal and let out the clutch.
I'm happy to report that none of those terrible things happened and the car did just what it was supposed to -- it went smoothly up the ramps, and easily stopped up on top. What a relief!
I strapped the car down and headed off to my breakfast meeting. Most of the drive was along the highway and I had to chuckle to myself as I saw car after car pull up alongside the trailer, slow down to check it out and then pull forward with a thumbs-up or a wave. At one point, I watched a motorcyclist do the same thing, but when he pulled forward he signaled to me to lower the window. There we were going 60 mph have a conversation about the car!
When I got to the diner, I knew I wouldn't be able to park in the regular lot with a trailer, but there is a bank next door so I pulled in there. As I parked, I saw 6 other cobras lined-up in the diner's lot, but they couldn't see me because of some bushes between the two lots. I quickly figured out an easy way to get their attention -- I started the engine and revved it a few times. Just like a pack of hyenas sensing wounded prey, they had surrounded me in no time.
The guys poked their heads in, around and under everything. I told them to let me know if they saw any problems or had any advice. What I got was "great job", "fantastic", "one of the best I've seen", and "really, a dog gate?". Suddenly, my standing within the group changed. I wasn't just a voyeur any more, I was becoming accepted as an equal. It was a great morning.
I came home with even more enthusiasm to get the car completed. Since it was a beautiful autumn day and I had only driven the car a total of 100 feet so far, I thought I'd test it out a little more. I really wanted to make sure the brakes worked well under a hard stop. So I backed the car to the end of a straight section of driveway, accelerated forward and hit the brakes before reaching the road. The brakes worked pretty good (but I'm still going to do more testing in a parking lot somewhere). The thing that really surprised me was the acceleration. I don't think I've every done 30 mph in my driveway before!
And just for fun, I took it out into the road when no cars were around. I'll need to learn how to be easier on the accelerator.
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