Sometimes Things just go Wrong....SOOO Wrong.

Another boy scout outing at baiting hollow. As usual, I'm doing the cooking.

Bandera v.2 will be hot all day. Doing biscuits and gravy for breakfast while the other dads do up the eggs... then Philly cheese steaks for lunch with BBQ london broil, a couple sausage rings and I'm bringing my last package of jalapeño sausage for me and the scoutmaster(we'll go hide in a tent). Will have some chusk roasts cooking to make Cowboy Stew fro dinner and Sweets Ts potato casserole and some dutch oven cherry cobbler for dessert.

Well. That was the Plan.

Arrived at the campgrounds with the trailer in tow. Set up camp and trailer with a U shape kitchen setup. Bandera sat the front, table to the left, stove to the right. Woods under the table.



Fired up the Bandera..

shot up and held 350 on 2 small logs, thanks to the new lid. sorry for crappy pics.




Started cooking. Now, notice the car is still hooked up to the trailer, and the trailer was pitched backward. The water pan was so unlevel i couldn't fill it more than halfway, and stuff would roll around on the tables.. So disconnect and lower the front end all the way to ground level to get trailer even, chocked the wheels, and stuck a log under the corners to prevent the wheelie. Alls good. Resume cooking..

Sausages, brats, ABT's, for snacks and I get the stew going, by 430 the stew meat is fall apart tender, I throw in the london broils for cheese steak sandwich's, and ring the dinner bell to get the kids to start coming back for 6-630.

alls well, The kids are back from the busy day. They were manning all different stations for a jamboree, archery, hunting, tracking, fishing.. all kinds of good stuff, and they were hungry.. They sat around the campfire and i start calling them over in pairs to get cheese steak sammys, and some of Solidkicks(sweet t's) potato casserole.
I had an assembly line setup. Open buns, slicing board for the steak, pot of caramelized onions, big bowl of shredded cheese, then the spice box with sauces of choice. Sandwich goes into the Bandera to toast and melt the cheese, comes out gets a ladle of beef aujus from the pot on the firebox, a woff of potatoes and gets handed to the scout.. we did about 20 sandwich's in under 15 minutes. Perfect. The other troops are watching, scout masters are asking where to sign up for next time.. It was going great. It was as one other troops scoutmaster called it, "quite a display".

That was first course, later they will get some hot stew over egg noodles to warm them up and slow them down.

A couple dads are up on the trailer helping, and the kids are starting to froth at the mouth.. They are devouring the sandwich's in minutes, and coming back for more potatoes, some are looking for stew NOW, they are running up and down the trailer checking stuff out.. things were getting rambunctious and the scout masters had to restore order..

I turn to start serving some adults. Figure I can start the stew and I begin to drain the noodles. Serve one or 2 adults, who head over to the campfire. All of a sudden as I'm serving someone, i hear one of the kids yelling.. and thru the corner of my eye i see one of the bigkids leap...flies over the walk up ramp to the trailer and land behind me like superman... the next 10 seconds are a blur.

All of a sudden, the farkin earth shifted, farkin pots are flying, i see the big 4 gallon stew pot sliding sideways, followed by the turkey fryer/noodles pot, I am thrown/fall sideways and land behind the trailer, one dad is on the ground next to me, I'm landed on my feet, and standing next to another dad as we both are like WTF!! .

WE look and the trailer is jsut there, the table is overturned, everything is on the floor, The pots are rolling down a hill about 15 feet behind us, The Bandera is laying doors down on the floor, some hot coals fell out of the firebox, the trailer floor is smoldering, the pots are all gone, stew is all over the ramp. Table is collapsed, everthing on it is gone. No one knows WTF just happened..

Everyone is scrambling to pick stuff up.. i jump up on the trailer and lift the Bandera back upright and dump water on the hot coals that fell out. Still dumbfounded.. total confusion.

Anyone who was on the trailer has no clue what happened it all happened in about 5 seconds.

We find out from the kids and one of the dads who was standing around watching by the corner of the trailer. He was next to the Bandera.. on the outside of the trialer by the tongue.

Seems the kid who leaped onto the back of the trailer off set the weight distribution, and the trailer did a tail dive.. nose of the trailer went up as soon as he landed(keep in mind, this kid is 15, about 170lbs). The dad on the outside in the front tried holding it down, but as soon as the Bandera started rolling forward, he went up too.. The Bandera crashed into the table and threw it over, then fell over itself.

ok... my first response was what happened to the farking logs/stabilizers I put under the trailer corners to stop that??

Gone. NOT THERE!!!! Both of them gone! A log used as a wheel chock also missing. Thank god the other side was still there.

WTF!!!!! Where are those friggin logs that were there to support the trailer? They were in there tight.. I had to kick them into place. They were in there tight. !!! The next morning, you can see where they were kicked into place, and the hole they made AS I STOMPED THEM INTO PLACE FROM BEHIND THE TRAILER. I made sure the fit tight against the angle in the trailers corner.. You can also see THE DIRECTION THEY WERE REMOVED, FROM THE SIDE OF THE TRAILER.

Best guess as to where they are.. The Firepit... We told the kids to gather wood.. so they did. I brought a pile of old wood that i cant use for cooking anymore and threw it next to the trailer for them to move to the fire pit. Best guess, one of the kids grabbed anything they can find, including the wheel chocks.

I asked if anyone took the logs that were standing up under the trailer. no one owned up.. duhhhh..

Well, no one was hurt, that was the most important part. It could have been a real disaster. I just drained out the noodles, which if not, we would have had a huge pot of boiling water on the stove.. or a kid could have been on the trailer too, or the Bandera could have landed on someone.. There was so many recipe's for disaster that we're grateful that the worse casualty was a pot of stew and a few hungry dads that were helping and not eating yet.. so we had hot dogs for dinner.

The Bandera had some damage that will need to be fixed. I am having adjustable legs added the trailer like on an RV, and also will weld a couple rings to the front to use to lock the Bandera. The ones for the BYC are too high. At comps, i always strap the BYC to the front of the trailer and use jack stands in the rear. In this case, due to the incline, the back of the trailer was very high and the nose was all the way down, so the jack stands were too short. Figure a 24 inch sliding leg on the outside corner with 1 inch adjustments will cover it all.

As for the kid who leaped on the back of the trailer.. Eye Witness accounts said as soon as he hit, he fell backward and landed on the ground.... he saw the carnage happening and got up and ran into a tent, not to be seen the rest of the night. :evil:

oh well.. we live to cook another day, and have something to talk about at next weeks meeting. :eusa_clap

The Bandera has a bent door on the firebox and the front shelf supports were torn off. Not sure how the door got bent, I think it landed on the handle and damper handle. Wasnt alot of time to figure that out.. just had to get it upright. its due into the welder anyway to get the hitch welded on, and some additional reinforcing.

yeah, no one lost their cool.. And most everyone ran over to help cleanup and recovery immediatly after. I also broke protocol and went for a swig of yagermeister. Seeing 5-6 hours of cooking sitting in the mud was pretty crummy. Alot of disappointed kids waiting for stew, as well as adults..Since myself and a few dads never got anything more than a taste of the stuff, we got a load of abuse from others telling us how good it was. We'll pencil it into the handbook as one of the "stories".

i learned about the trailer wheelie in our very first comp and after that, always make sure its well supported. for 3 years i always cook on the trailer, and never had a problem, especially with the jack stands. in this case, those logs were stomped into position. the logs were longer than the distance from ground to trailer so they had to be dug in. so to get them in, i stomped them in which not only dug them in below grade, but lifted the trailer slightly. they were supported at the top by the angleline that protrudes down below deck in the corner. they were about 2-3 inches into the ground, and when i got them in place, i pushed the dirt back and stomped more. i also did a few test shakes/jumps when i was getting started as did the dad that was helping. that platform was solid.


what was also evident is that they were pulled out from the side becase of the second divit next to the hole. i installed from the rear of the trailer, the second divit was coming out of the side. the leaves were moved and the log was not there. no way they fell out. they were in way to tight. only way was to be kicked or pulled.


keep in mind, in photo it was still hooked up to the truck. the left to right angle is the camera, not ground.





sorry, caps lock seems to have stopped working.