April 16, 2024
Vanceboro, NC
Where to start? Stu-boy’s officially took possession of our trailer four days before our first scheduled event. As you can see from our previous post, it had no outside shelving installed.
We did manage to mount two drop-down shelves before Kirkman’s Family Day, our first event. In our rush to work on it,we installed the first side shelf on the side from which we would NOT be serving. So much for proper prior planning.
As an aside, mounting the first drop-down shelf took almost an entire day. The second one consumed about an hour. The third–well that’s another story–for later.
Because the trailer is over eight feet wide, the wheel wells are inside. To set up our folding tables under the windows we had to shorten one leg on two of them. Not to worry, though; eventually, the folding tables will be replaced by stainless steel work tables.
Organization and storage was challenging. As most of you know, before the trailer we squeezed and served our lemons under a canopy on an eight foot table–four feet for each person squeezing. The arrangement of the tables in the trailer rendered that process untenable. Now, one squeezer works on a side, and the other squeezer works on the back table–the three tables being arranged in a “U” configuration.
At least that was the plan. Being reluctant to “destroy” both of our short tables by sawing off a leg, I decided to save one, just in case. Bad idea! The interior wheel well decided it didn’t want to play nicely a table with four full-sized legs, so we had to set the remaining short table up “sideways,” which cut down our available free space significantly. We conveniently added to our free space conundrum by adding a fourth, six foot, table. Our idea was the six foot table would “hold stuff.”
It didn’t quite work out that way. Of the 85 square feet of floor space available in the trailer, we covered 51 of them with tables. Not much room left for 3 people plus water, fruit, cups, lids, and other various supplies.
Bottom line–we managed to get through our first event of the season despite the learning curve of working in an smaller enclosed space.
One thing I almost forgot to mention: The trailer floor sits 21 inches off the ground. Young knees can work with that gap just fine. Older knees complain about having to hoist one’s body up over the breech! We brought a folding step stool, but it broke about half way through the day. I guess it couldn’t handle the stress and simply gave up.
#StuboySips #SummerFun