Life is INTERESTING !!!

Just as things are going along smooth,,,,,,BANG!!!! You have a BAD day!! That was us yesterday.
As the HDT Rally in Hutchinson came to a close, everyone was departing and heading their own desired directions. Us included. Yesterday (Saturday) morning we headed on our way towards Little Rock. Things were going along fine when a car pulled up along side us and motioned us to pull over. What in the WORLD??, was our reaction. A young fellow came running back to us saying that SMOKE was coming from one of our tires!! That causes your heart rate to increase somewhat!!! What had happened???? We jumped out and started checking, sure enough the left front tire on our Teton had thrown a tread and was caught between it and the frame and also the next tire back. The tire still had full air pressure in it. That explains why the PressurePro tire monitoring system didn't alarm. Smoke has a tendency to travel to the center and out the back. It's nearly always impossible to see!! I was watching and didn't see a thing!!!
If this young fellow had not stopped us, the tire would have soon BLOWN OUT !!!!! The damage would probably be a LOT worse than it was........It tore the insulation off from above the tire and that's about all the damage I could see. We'll check closer later.

So we were quite LUCKY!!!! Now, what to do next?? We were on a rather busy 2 lane highway south of Stillwater, OK. It did have a good shoulder. I pulled over as far as I could, put out my emergency reflectors, got out my tools, my bottle Jack, took the spare down from it's mount and changed the wheels. Pat was watching and keeping the traffic from running over me as I was laying on the edge of the traffic side. Cars, trucks, etc were whizzing by at 50-60 + mph. Not a fun situation. I could have called our Road Service, but it would have taken hours(it was Saturday) and I wanted to try it myself first and then use road service as plan "b".
My plan WORKED!!!! After about an hour of Blood, Sweat and yes, Tears, we were on our way.
Tired, Dirty, and both of our backs hurting, but we were on our way......out of the road.....Thank GOD.

We made the rest of our trip for the day, a little late, but ready to hang it up for the night...WHEW!!!!!! Tomorrow we'll go on into Little Rock,,,about 140 miles. There we will decide what to do about the tire. We are thinking about doing what our good friends Mark and Dale Bruss did and go to new 17.5" wheels with the new Goodyear G114's. It's a JOB and EXPENSE, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!! Right?

OK, we'll handle that come MONDAY morning!!!!!

Well, when we got up this morning,,,our REFRIGERATOR had QUIT!!!!!!! It's an AMANA and has quit before and we had to put in a Start Capacitor while we were at Custer. At Custer we have another Frig to put all our stuff in,,,,,,,ugh,,,here we DON"T!!!! It's not an RV refrigerator, so an RV place can't help. It takes a Household repairman..........WOW,,,2 bad days in a row!!!!

It's a TERRIBLE job getting the Amana out so they can work on it and the repairman WILL NOT do it.........so WE must!!!! We've done it once, so we'll do it again!!! Meanwhile, all we have is a little cooler, an insulated bag and a very small frig in the Truck.......So lots of good frozen meat, etc. is gone......................Tossed out!!

What next,,,,,,,,,,We have to keep smiling and work through this,,,,,and we WILL. Like my son Scott used to say, "It's Just a Bump in the Road". We've been full timing for over 13 years and this is ABSOLUTELY the FIRST tire problem we have had..........not even as much as a FLAT before! So we were due,,,,,,,,,,,,,,right?

Just like we used to do at work when the roof fell in, we'll take these problem situations ONE by ONE and handle them..... We'll come back smiling, smarter, minus a few bucks, but stronger than ever.

Thanks for stopping by and we'll see you next week with a progress report........


Shucks,,,,,IT's still a GREAT WEEK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hang in there.

Mike

This Blog is Published every Sunday morning......