WIPE OUT!

Headed west in Missouri somewhere our luck decided to go south and we suffered a blowout on one of the camper tires. As you can see from the first photo above, it shouldn't have been hard to tell that there was something wrong with the tire. But I was rolling down a US highway at 60 mph cursing because I couldn't figure out why the car was stuck in 2nd gear. Luckily, some Missouri rednecks passed us pointing to our trailer and laughing. No kidding. So anyway we pulled over and discovered that we needed to change a blow out. So we did what everyone should do....called AAA and told them to send someone out on the double. But after a short talk with the AAA operator it was determined that we were not covered for a tire change on the camper. Something about the fine print. So, anyway, Cindy and I got out the old jack and spare tire and commenced the change ourselves. Only the jack for the Suburban isn't tall enough to get the camper off the tires. Oops, we probably should have checked that before setting sail. But our maritime innovation skills, honed on our offshore seapassages aboard Mariah came to the rescue. Whenever we had a question onboard Mariah we simply consulted Don Casey's "This Old Boat" which is a bible of yacht ownership. In the second photo, you can see that "This Old Boat" combined with the 2007 West Marine Catalog make a spacer exactly the correct height to allow the jack to get the camper off the ground. In no time at all, we had the tire changed and were back on the road. We spent the night at a nearby state park in hopes of having our spare tire repaired the next morning (Sunday morning).

Which brings me to Sunday morning. I have long been an opponent of Wal-Marts and other "big box" retailers since they have been destroying small town America and locally owned businesses. But let me tell you, we live in a great country where you can get a trailer tire repaired on a Sunday morning at 7 am in less than five minutes for 30 bucks. And to top that, there were two other "mom and pop" tire stores in the town but were, of course, closed because it was Sunday. So with a renewed optimism for the retail American marketplace we set off again to the Northwest bound for Council Bluffs, Iowa.