Brakes, Kids, and Loose Lugnuts

     I bought my first truck the other day. I thought I was high stylin in my 95 F250 with 7.3 turbo diesel under the hood. I actually had no clue what any of that meant at the time just that I needed different gas. I loved my new truck. It was perfect and to me it ran like a dream. Truth be told it had a laundry list of things that needed to be worked on. If it was a fluid it leaked, if it was a joint it squeaked and if it had a temperature gauge it peeked. So my first under taking was to get the brakes working properly. I jacked the truck up put on the jackstands and took off my wheels. Springs, shoes and connectors flew everywhere. After about 20 trips to the auto parts store I finally got it all together, with my neighbor's help. While I was doing this my kids kept coming up to me begging me to take them on a four wheeler ride. I put them off telling them that I would later. I put my tires on and tightened the lug nuts. I felt accomplished. I had never done hardly any auto work before and here I had changed all of my brakes. After i threw my last tire on I cranked up the four wheeler and took my kids on the promised ride. I was a man. A day later I had to load my truck up with all my earthly possesions and drive to Louisiana where I had just been restationed. I proudly hoped in my manly truck and took off down the road. It didnt take long before it occurred to me that I had a problem. I diagnosed my problem when my front tire flew by my window, I nose dived into the asphault and I saw lugnuts shooting everywhere. In basking in my glory of the job I had done and trying to appease my children with a four wheeler ride I forgot to tighten the lugnuts on one wheel all the way down and now I was skidding down the road like an airplane with no landing gear. When I came to rest, my lug nuts where spread over about 40 feet and my tire had bounced about 30 yards away into the middle of  a set of train tracks. I proudly own the name "Gooftroop".