Ice-Road Truckin'

My dad likes to watch this show where the truck out supplies to oil rigs in big semi-trucks over the frozen sea-ice. I decided to try some of my own ice-road trucking this morning with disastrous results:

You see, with the overnight temperatures at something like 26 degrees, the top of the ground (which is completely saturated from recent major rains) was frozen. I figured, I could haul some round bales up to the upper pasture where the cattle are at by driving OVER the frozen ground. I hitched up to the trailer (see below) and immediately hit a snag - the trailer was totally frozen into the ground.

Those bales are somewhere around 1,200 to 1,500 pounds each

(by the way, how do you like my new trailer?)

I guess it should have served as fair warning, but I rocked it back and forth for a few minutes until it popped loose and I was able to pull it all the way up to the upper pasture. As we went, I could tell trouble was coming...

You see, the gate was closed, so I was going to have to stop and park to get out and open it before trying to get going again. Sure enough, after I opened the gate, I couldn't get going again. So I backed up a bit and tried again, nope. Backed up a bit more, nope. Again and again until I was really stuck with no more room to back up.

I called Jessica and asked her to bring out the suburban (assuring her that it would not get stuck.) Unfortunately, the Suburban is (or should I say was?) in an extremely rare state of having just been washed. Unfortunately, the temperature was climbing and things were melting. Unfortunately, she got stuck.

Long story short, I pushed her out (then stood helplessly as she showered me with a roostertail of mud as she drove off), then unhooked the trailer where it sat and spent another 30 minutes getting my truck unstuck before heading inside in cold muddy dejection, having failed miserably in my attempt to get the hay unloaded. Will someone please slap me the next time I try to buy a 2WD truck?