Day 11 - The Jinx
After having an uneventful day yesterday and mentioning it, I jinxed myself (or maybe it was Susan Bailey who had called and left a message mentioning that things looked like they were going well)...
Vicki and I were traveling from Big Spring to Fort Davis today. More specifically, Davis Mountains State Park. We pull into a gas station, which is still a heralding experience. Vicki notices that one of the tires is going flat. We are lucky it did not blow. It could be that it had nitrogen in it which slowed the leak or that the leak was a slow one. So the first thing we do is use the handy Ryobi Air Compressor that Vicki bought for UTT (Unidentified Travel Trailer). I am really surprised the compressor with battery had enough umph to fill the tire up to 55 lbs. But it did!!! Once we quit inflating the tire, we can hear the air coming out again.
In case you cannot tell it is the back tire, which we had just filled.
Then Vicki remembers we have the equivalent of AAA for Travel Trailers. So she gives them a call, after being on the line for 15 to 20 minutes she lets them know that we have a flat and they send someone out to see us. The estimated time was one hour to get there. Not much different than AAA.
The next thing to do is move the the trailer away from the gas pumps. vicki goes inside to ask where we can park and she says next door in the truck parking lot. After some finagling, I get UTT next door and find a spot. Of course, as soon as do that a better spot is found. So I move it and the tire still has air in it.
It turns out the the guy only needed a half hour to get to us. He shows up and replaces the flat tire with the spare. He does not fix flat tires but recommends Pecos Tire Company. He cannot get the flat tire on the spare tire holder because it has a fancier wheel than the spare, so we put it in UTT. Why the spare tire holder wasn't able to hold the regular tire is a mystery. BTW kudos to Jeff K. on the spare tire holder repair. It is holding up great.
After the tire is put in UTT we go to Pecos Tire Company. It is only a few miles away. We are told to go to the back to Bay 3 and park. A person comes out and finds the problem, two nails in the tire. My thanks to the highway workers who left the nails on the road. We had passed several construction zones on the way from Big Spring. Now the last time I had a flat tire repaired, it cost me $10, which does not sound like a lot but this was in the 1980's. Not soon after that I discovered Discount Tire, which would do it for free even if you did not buy the tires from them. I never had to pay for fixing a flat tire again, until today. I was guessing it would cost around $30-40 to get it repaired. We ended up paying $15!!! Pecos fixed the flat, changed the tire, and put the spare back on the tire holder.
Now we call the State Park because we are not going to get there until after the office closes. They leave our info on the map board and we arrive around 5:30pm. We get camp set up, have enough time for a short nap and then off to MacDonald Observatory for sunset and for our 9pm reservation for the star party. We had a full moon tonight which was not too bad, but also had clouds. It was not enough to cancel the show but the stars/planets would disappear once in a while. As part of the star party, they setup various telescopes pointed at different things in the sky. We got to see Jupiter with 4 of its larger moons, our Moon (the man is still there), and a star cluster called M35.
I was able to take some pre-star party pictures. Here are some of them.
Paul Kristoff
photo@kristoffs.com
PaulKristoffPhotography.com
paulkristoff.blogspot.com/
Vicki and I were traveling from Big Spring to Fort Davis today. More specifically, Davis Mountains State Park. We pull into a gas station, which is still a heralding experience. Vicki notices that one of the tires is going flat. We are lucky it did not blow. It could be that it had nitrogen in it which slowed the leak or that the leak was a slow one. So the first thing we do is use the handy Ryobi Air Compressor that Vicki bought for UTT (Unidentified Travel Trailer). I am really surprised the compressor with battery had enough umph to fill the tire up to 55 lbs. But it did!!! Once we quit inflating the tire, we can hear the air coming out again.
In case you cannot tell it is the back tire, which we had just filled.
Then Vicki remembers we have the equivalent of AAA for Travel Trailers. So she gives them a call, after being on the line for 15 to 20 minutes she lets them know that we have a flat and they send someone out to see us. The estimated time was one hour to get there. Not much different than AAA.
The next thing to do is move the the trailer away from the gas pumps. vicki goes inside to ask where we can park and she says next door in the truck parking lot. After some finagling, I get UTT next door and find a spot. Of course, as soon as do that a better spot is found. So I move it and the tire still has air in it.
It turns out the the guy only needed a half hour to get to us. He shows up and replaces the flat tire with the spare. He does not fix flat tires but recommends Pecos Tire Company. He cannot get the flat tire on the spare tire holder because it has a fancier wheel than the spare, so we put it in UTT. Why the spare tire holder wasn't able to hold the regular tire is a mystery. BTW kudos to Jeff K. on the spare tire holder repair. It is holding up great.
After the tire is put in UTT we go to Pecos Tire Company. It is only a few miles away. We are told to go to the back to Bay 3 and park. A person comes out and finds the problem, two nails in the tire. My thanks to the highway workers who left the nails on the road. We had passed several construction zones on the way from Big Spring. Now the last time I had a flat tire repaired, it cost me $10, which does not sound like a lot but this was in the 1980's. Not soon after that I discovered Discount Tire, which would do it for free even if you did not buy the tires from them. I never had to pay for fixing a flat tire again, until today. I was guessing it would cost around $30-40 to get it repaired. We ended up paying $15!!! Pecos fixed the flat, changed the tire, and put the spare back on the tire holder.
Now we call the State Park because we are not going to get there until after the office closes. They leave our info on the map board and we arrive around 5:30pm. We get camp set up, have enough time for a short nap and then off to MacDonald Observatory for sunset and for our 9pm reservation for the star party. We had a full moon tonight which was not too bad, but also had clouds. It was not enough to cancel the show but the stars/planets would disappear once in a while. As part of the star party, they setup various telescopes pointed at different things in the sky. We got to see Jupiter with 4 of its larger moons, our Moon (the man is still there), and a star cluster called M35.
I was able to take some pre-star party pictures. Here are some of them.
Paul Kristoff
photo@kristoffs.com
PaulKristoffPhotography.com
paulkristoff.blogspot.com/
Comments