Exciting Ride Home from the East Coast Vintage Rally

This may look more dreadful than it is. Yesterday, we had our first flat of nearly five years of trailer ownership…but it ended up being a pretty positive experience.

Rick felt something hit the wheel and both of us instantly knew it was tire problems. Luckily, we were just passing an on-ramp on I-81, so we managed to pull over towards the end of the merge lane (giving us a lane’s width of space to the freeway. We rolled out the spare, but soon realized that our jack kit had the wrong wrench–but stores were still open, so Rick left me with the trailer. The weather was perfect, so I sat down on the tire, pulled a coke out of the fridge and started reading my book.

Oddly, it really wasn’t unpleasant sitting on the side of I-81. The only perplexing thing was that passing big rig trucks kept on honking at me.  Before too long, Bob and Sue Chatman passed and pulled over. Bob pulled his wrenches out to try, but before we made it to the trailer, Rick had arrived. In short order, the tire was changed, using Bob’s extra long pry bar for extra torque.  We got on the road again as the skies opened up…for yet another shower.

Lots of good fortune–fairly easy switch, nearby hardware suppliers, good weather, deep pullover space, even at a time when we weren’t in a particular hurry!  The worst part–the gash to our belly pan–isn’t really that awful–we plan to replace it when we do the rear end–in the meanwhile, we can patch it. Mostly, it left us feeling that we can handle something that had given us silent dread for a long time.

Oh, and it made getting new tires a large priority!