Saturday, January 16 after spending time with Kerry and Annabelle at the dog park, I follow Glenda out to the Dome Rock area to visit her friend Wendy. (These are both solo Casita ladies). Suddenly I hear ‘ding! ding! ding!’ from JR and read “low tire pressure!” on my dash. Not again.
I make it to Wendy’s campsite and check the tire pressure in the tire that looks low, the right front one. Twenty-seven pounds…out of 35 pounds. Uh-oh. And I’m out here in the boonies. So out comes my trusty tire-pumper-upper! I decide this is for the birds, and I’m going to get 3 more new tires, to match the one I bought a few weeks ago. I call American Custom Tire, my Quartzsite home-away-from-home it seems. It’s Saturday but they close at noon, so I have 5 minutes. I order my new tires, and am told they will come in on Monday.
After a bit I check the tire pressure again and find it down 5 pounds from when I filled it. I fill it up again. Time to go! Hoping to find a place to put the spare on for me. It’s not a job I care to tackle out here in the boonies, or anywhere for that matter.
Loves, about 4-5 miles down Dome Rock Road, has a tire center! Amazingly, with all this insanity going on in town, they are not busy. An older gentlemen removes the leaking tire and replaces it with my spare. When he tells me he is finished, I ask if I pay him here or go into the office. “Don’t worry about it. No charge.” he says! I thank him and give him a nice tip.
I won’t be driving far since I’m using my spare tire and considering my track record wrecking tires. We do make it to the dog park on Sunday and Monday. It’s only about 1.5 miles away from where we are staying.
Monday afternoon my tires are delivered to the tire store and by 3:30 we are there to have them put on. We go for a walk while that is taking place, but they are busy and it takes longer than expected, so we wait in the store.
Joy and Shiloh hanging out at American Custom Tire in Quartzsite.
Sooo…one of my goals for 2016 was to work on better health and on January 2 I caught a cold. Another goal was to save some money and by the middle of the month I’ve dropped $200 at the vet and more than $700 at the tire store.
I think I’ll start all over again with the goals on February 1 ! :-)))
Wandering Spirit 
Get OUT! Tires again! Good to know you’re good to go with new ones though. Hope your cold is gone, now off to your Feb New Year ;-))))
Hi Mo, yes my cold is gone. Joy isn’t coughing. Shiloh is over his diarrhea. (Now if he would only poop…waiting…) We have new tires. Hope we are stable for awhile.
January has been a bear so far. I’m definitely starting my new year on Feb. 1.
Hi Marcia, yes, January…it’s been sad on a number of counts. May I be the first to wish you a Happy February 1 New Years!
That’s the reason you have an emergency fund. Isn’t it great that the problem showed up when you were somewhere that you could get it fixed with minimal disruption. Hopefully all the challenges of the year are behind you.
Yea Reine! I’m really glad I was staying in one place, for the tires and the vet. And I’m thankful that I have the money for things like this.
Are you and Paul coming to the Fiberglass Rally in Q by any chance?
Has there been sudden drops in temperature – 20 degrees or more in a couple of hours? If so, the rims contract and the seal with the tires loosen – letting the air out. If the tires aren’t worn enough to need replacing, the remedy is to have the rims cleaned at least once an year. This might come in handy next year if the new tires exhibit the same behavior.
Hi Debbie, nice to see you here!
Well that makes total sense about temperature changes, but no, nothing like that has been happening. It’s these rocks out here. The first tire had what they called a ‘rock break’ in it, along with some other damage. This one I didn’t even have them check because I know I drove in really bad rocks, twice recently. One time I accidentally got on an ATV trail, and that was really scary…and bumpy. I didn’t want to keep worrying about it so I just ordered the other 3 tires. There were actually almost 50,000 miles on those tires so I guess it was time. Before that a trailer tire was losing air and it was only a few months old. Turned out that the tire was fine but there was a crack in the wheel. I had just gotten new tires on the trailer in July. Now all the tires are new except the spare which has about 10 miles on it.
Hoping I’m set for awhile.