Tale of Vans Climbing Hills in the Winter

Last night we played at our home venue, The Champ, and the show was all good and well, a wide variety of genres in one night.

If you have been to The Championship, you know it's kind of down a weird hill under a bridge in a secret spot kind of deal. Our van had a rough adventure trying to escape that place last night.

We nearly made it to the top of the hill, but the icy driveway sent us coasting back downhill. The guys of In Alcatraz 1962 immediately jumped out and attempted to help give a push, but there was simply no traction. So we took all of the equipment out of the trailer, brought it down the hill, unhitched the trailer, moved it out of the way, loaded the trailer again, and tried to drive back up the hill with the trailer again.

The second time failed also. Jake from Champ was driving and he got out of the van. Seconds later, the van started drifting downhill again with the engine off (I guess someone forgot the E-brake). This jack-knifed the trailer, pushing it into the snow bank. From there we had to get the equipment out, which was very difficult because of all of the prickly plants in the way. This time we brought the equipment to the top of the hill. We then could budge the van enough to unhitch the trailer. That helped us finally get the van up the hill. We attached the trailer to Jake's van, and he drove it uphill for us. Then when we loaded the trailer at the top of the hill, we realized we had a flat tire. Jeremy went to get gas, since the van was on empty this whole time, while some of us tried to see if Britain's spare would fit.

Britain's spare tire didn't fit, so we went to Wal-Mart in Carlisle to pick up another tire. There wasn't one of the right size, so we used a bike pump from Wal-Mart to pump up the flat. Britain and Brandon (Brandon has the most car-smarts of all of us even though he can't yet drive) returned to Lemoyne to put the tire back on, and as far as I know the problem is pretty much taken care of.

Talk about a late night.