Jockey Wheel clarification

SunnyTAB

We got a very cursory explanation of how the jockey wheel works from the gal we bought Sunny from, and recently I got much better info from the attached pdf found on the Yahoo board but any and all input would be appreciated. We've dropped the wheel out once while my husband was pulling it up to the car hitch - not fun.

Sidenote: we suck at backing up, both with and without the trailer (well I should say that the DRIVER, much as I love him, sucks at backing up. I haven't been given the chance). So we hook/unhook and then place Sunny manually, mostly at our storage unit.

The last time we unhooked her, we didn't make sure that the jockey wheel was aligned with the trailer. When it came down, it was sideways and since we had cranked the tube all the way down she was locked into this sideways position. We were still able to scoot her back into the spot because the wheel could just skip along the ground sideways (awful, I know, but I don't think we had any option unless we put her back on the hitch). Wouldn't that be the only correction in that case (though I don't think we'll let that happen in the future)?

NOW, when we have to hitch her back up on Saturday, I'm hoping that we can a) unlock the jockey wheel and just pull it straight up by hand which will unlock the wheel, then b) then we can relock it and crank the wheel up off the ground since Sunny is standing on her stabilizers. Then we can relower just the wheel and get it straightened out so we can pull her forward to the truck (our storage space doesn't actually give us room to back right to her). Does that sound doable?

Hope this makes sense. Until I read the attached PDF, I don't think we really understood that you didn't have to crank the tube up and down, just the wheel once you lowered the tube. Anyway, I don't think we've been doing it right at all so any clarification would help. (Thankfully, someone told us early on to bungee it up, though we didn't when we first brought her home. Thank goodness we didn't lose it on that first trip.)

Thanks for your wisdom!

PS. This is old school Thor/Dutchman Jockey Wheel.