oops

had a great weekend of flying. saturday i flew out to block island and westerly, it was a little bumpy but nothing too bad. sunday....oooooh sunday. the whole was smooth as can be. took off out of providence and made my way southeast towards martha's vineyard. it only took 30 minutes to get there which was sweet. however, we werent the only people headed down there. if you have ever driven through boston at 5:00 on a friday with a home game ready to go, you can now understand what it is like to fly into martha's vineyard. every wealthy shmuck within a 1000 mile radius decides to head to the island and cause the worst airborne traffic jam i have ever seen. whatever, we get on the ground and had some lunch. it took us at least 30 minutes to make our way through the same traffic jam and get off the ground. Flew north up to hyannis, did a touch and go, glad to be out of airplane gridlock. tracked west towards providence (this story does have a climax so just keep reading). overflew Otis AFB on the cape and saw their 10 F-15's lined up on the ground, very cool. Ok, time to land in Providence (PVD). there is a line of airliners waiting to depart so the tower kindly asks us to expedite our approach, in other words, hurry up you shit head. we came in high so i flew the plane sideways down the ground, its called slipping, you lose altitude without gaining speed. we touch the ground, it was fairly textbook, not my best landing certainly not the worst. the front wheel of the plane is a caster wheel, you can spin the thing 360 degrees no problem. sometimes when you land it isnt perfectly straight so it wiggles....alot. you pull back on the stick to relieve pressure on the nosewheel, and it usually straightens out right away. well this time it didnt. it kept on wobbling, and wobbling, and wobbling until we heard the snap. we veer off the right, going slow now mind, onto a taxiway leading off the runway. we are stuck. not moving. at all. the tower is yelling at us to get off the runway, we are telling her, calmly, that we think we lost our nose wheel and we cant move. apparently this is not a good enough reason to get stuck on a runway. she continues to yell at us to move. finally the southwest pilot waiting to take off starts helping us out. the airport finally sends a truck out to help us out, sure enough half of the bracing on the front tire decided that this would be a fine time to stop working. we had to get the golf cart out and tow the plane down the runway. it wasnt my fault, it wasnt my instructors fault. shit just happens. but, but but but, not many people can say that they had lunch on martha's vineyard, and then proceeded to shut down a runway at a major airport. chalk one up for the pooter.