02-07-2019 Blowout and a Safe Landing

Current Location: Shields RV Camp, Gulfport, Mississippi

Dark and overcast and 70 degrees F at 8PM

It is one of the exciting things about RVing.  If you put many miles on the road, sooner or later you will have a flat tire, or maybe even a blowout.  Some people swear by pressure system sensors, but my trucker daughter says they cause more problems than they prevent.  Talk amongst yourselves on this one, as Bob Mclean of the Caretaker Chronicles would say.  Our minds are made up and we don’t have them.

At the moment, settled in to our location for the next two nights, I find I can’t think about anything that happened over the last two days since we left San Antonio except the BLOWOUT!  Maybe if I write about it, it will go away and I can think about something else.

We bought 4 new tires for the rig before we left on the trip.  The two perfectly fine older tires were from previous years, and we thought things would be OK with them.  We still aren’t sure if it was the 2013 tire that blew because it was old or if it was the killer rough road on I-10 all the way through Texas, but either way it got us today.

We had spent a lovely evening last night at Fort Sam Houston State Park in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  Traveling east on the Interstate was a mix of smooth here and there mixed with killer rough bumps and potholes that I couldn’t avoid.  I was driving.

We decided that it would be fun to stop at the Atchafalaya Visitor Center as we left Lafayette, and as we began the magnificent crossing of the Atchafalaya Basin on the magnificent 18 mile long bridge, we heard a magnificent explosion and felt the bang of hard metal and rubber hitting the bottom of the rig  Believe me, that is a wake-up call if there ever was one.  We had a blowout once previously on the way to Brookings, so the sound wasn’t new to us and I knew immediately what had happened. 

The knee shaking, heart pounding moment was made a lot worse by the 70 mile per hour semis passing us on the freeway right there over the water.  I pulled as close to the railing as I could manage, Mo pulled in the mirror, and squeezing along the bridge railing and the rig, she checked under the rig to try to see which tire had blown.  Inside rear dually, on the driver’s side.  Inches from those speeding semis. 

We had great cell coverage, thank goodness, and calling AAA RV was quick and easy.  They answered almost immediately.  When she asked if we were in a safe place, I loudly said NO! We are NOT in a safe place.  That escalated our call to an emergency, and she also asked if we wanted the police to be notified.  We definitely did, since sitting there on the roadside on that bridge was pretty scary.

As we waited for help to arrive, we saw that the traffic backup that we saw begin back in Lafayette had reached more than 10 miles eastward.  Who knows how that might affect a truck getting to us.  A bit later they called again, telling us that they couldn’t do anything on the bridge, and we would have to limp slowly to the first exit.

Lucky for us, that first exit was only a mile from us at the Visitor Center, and with a bit of fear and trepidation, Mo drove the baby car behind me while I crawled along in the MoHo.  Lucky for us, the right side edge  of the road never thinned so much that I had to slip into that 70 mph traffic at 2 mph.

The other little glitch that was a result of the blowout was that we had no power, either from the generator or from the house batteries.  The generator wouldn’t start but things would work if the MoHo engine was running.  We didn’t know if there had been some kind of undercarriage damage from the explosive force of the blowout.  Knees were shaking and heart was pounding for quite some time after we were safely parked in the visitor center lot waiting for the tire guy.

It took a bit of time, but once he arrived, things were taken care of quickly.  He even found where the battery wires had come loose and hooked everything back up.  Voila!  Power.  With a new tire and power to the rig, everything turned out OK.  So grateful for happy endings.

I will take a bit more time and write about the last couple of days on the road tomorrow morning.  Tonight I plan to drink a shot of Jack and decompress!

06-08-2015 Blowout on the way to Brookings

Current Location: Rocky Point, Oregon Sunny and warm at 79 F

Ah yes, every RV’rs worst nightmare.  Believe it or not, it wasn’t nearly as terrible as you might expect. 

Finally, after a couple of months of working on projects, preparing and recuperating from surgery, and enjoying our little Mattie, Mo and I headed for the beach.  We wanted to go to Harris Beach State Park for several reasons.  We love it there.  Judy is volunteering there this summer.  It is only a 2 hour drive from the Grants Pass cottage. 

As soon as I knew when Judy was going to be working, I made a reservation.  That was two months ago, and it is a good thing I did.  Seems as though Harris Beach is fairly popular in the summertime.  I realized as I looked back that we haven’t actually visited very often during the summer months.  Both of us know that the coast is often just the opposite of inland when it comes to temperatures, and summer fogs are common.  I warned Judy about that.  When people refer to Brookings as the “Banana Belt” of the Oregon Coast, they are usually talking about those gorgeous sunny days in December that can sometimes reach the 80’s while the rest of Oregon is cold and rainy. 

Summertime, however, is a different story.  Hot inland, cold at the coast.  Chilly inland, warmer at the coast.  Oregon was in the midst of some record breaking heat last week, so we expected it to be cooler in Brookings.

The day we drove west, however, last Monday June 8, was hot and gorgeous just about everywhere.  We left early enough to arrive around 1, even though check in time is technically 2pm. 

The winding drive from Cave Junction to Hiochi along Scenic Highway 199 next to the Smith River is impressive.  Lots of curves, drop offs, gorgeous views of turquoise pools far below the cliffs adjacent to the highway.  The very narrow highway.

BOOM!!  on a curve, with a vertical cliff upward on the passenger side, and another vertical cliff down to the river on the driver’s side, that boom wasn’t something we were expecting.  It was LOUD.  and SCARY.  Adrenalin pumping, Mo had no trouble keeping the rig going forward and we realized that the blowout must have been an inside dual.  We slowed way down and crawled to the closest turnout, which happened to be on the other side of the road going the opposite direction.  

No cell service.  Not a hint.  Nada.  Sure does make us appreciate that we have a toad!  Mo unhooked (this surgery recuperation thing is a true pain, I can’t lift the hitch for another couple of months) and I drove off west to find a spot with a signal.

Calling AAA wasn’t a problem until the dispatcher (someone somewhere in a far off state with a very difficult accent) said that AAA can’t change an inside dual, and that we would have to be towed.  Where did we want to go.  I told her several times I didn’t have cell service, but it didn’t click and she kept saying she would call me to keep us updated.  Nope.

Instead I drove back a few miles to Mo and the waiting rig where we were conveniently parked in the shade in one of the prettiest spots on the entire route.  Many times as we have passed this turnout we have wanted to stop, but usually it is full so we haven’t done it.  Shade, a view, no cell service, but who cares.  It is a gorgeous afternoon and we have a reservation so we can be as late as we need to be.  Whew. 

Within an hour a van pulled up, with a guy who said AAA sent him out to find us since they couldn’t reach us by phone.  He couldn’t change the tire, but he also said that we could obviously not be towed because we had a flat tire!.  He said that Les Schwab in Crescent City could do the change if we were willing to pay for the repair and then get reimbursed by AAA.  Sure.  Another hour went by and the Les Schwab truck showed up, but the guy didn’t realize that our hubs had covers on them and spent a very long time trying to find a lug wrench that would fit over the caps before we realized what he was doing and told him he needed to remove the covers to get to the lugs.

After a lot of work, he did manage to get the tire changed, but rather than straighten out the bent mud flap before putting the tires back on, he thought he would just pull the flap down.  Another half an hour went by before he decided he needed to take the tires back off, work at getting the flap untangled, and put the tires back on.  While we were waiting, I enjoyed every little moment of fluttering maple leaves against the brilliant blue skies.  It was an incredibly beautiful day to be sitting outside. By 3:30 we were once again on our way west.  We at first couldn’t figure out why that tire had failed, and had failed so badly.  This set of tires was a full set of six that Mo got as part of a recall by Michelin in late 2013 just before we went on our three month trip to Florida.  What both of us had forgotten, however, is that back in Florida we had a flat, and the spare was installed in the inside dual position. We didn’t find out till the next day in Brookings, when Mo bought a new Michelin tire, that that spare was one of the original tires from the MoHo with a date of 2005.  UhOh.  I guess a tire might fail if it is ten years old. 

We managed to get to Brookings by 5, a little bit worn out, and I walked up to Judy’s spot to let her know we had made it to camp. The next few days were great, with beach time and Judy time and some new places to explore in Brookings that we had never seen. 

But more of that in the next post…