Doh!

 6:52 am - Thursday - February 11th - Oakridge, OR - 40° F, 81% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the east by southeast......cloudy today with a 93% chance of rain and a high of 51°F.  On this date in 2012 we were in Stuart Beach, FL fishing with our good friend Ernie Prociw......

We were up by 7 am Wednesday in anticipation of our departure around 11 am.  I had a number of things to accomplish before we could roll our wheels including, but not limited to mounting our bike rack, and our two eBikes, moving my tool bags from the trailer to the through storage bay, along with miscellaneous other things.  The final task was to check the air pressure in our six tires.  Five tires came up about 10 pounds low, but I could not get a reading off the left inside dualie tire.....why is it always the inside dualie tire?  Thinking there might be a problem with the air valvle extender on that wheel I set it aside and aired up the other 5 tires.  Around 10:30 am I came back to the left inside dualie to see if I could solve the problem.  After 30 minutes of trying to get the tire to hold air I determined it must have gone flat over the months we have been in Seal Rock, and then when we moved the coach a while back to relevel the site the bead must have broken away from the rim.....doh!

I called a few tire shops in Newport to see if they could send someone out to fix my issue, and finally got a positive response from the Les Schwab Tire shop in Newport.  Derek said he could be there between 2 and 3 pm......doh again!  I set the appointment hoping I could get my emergency road service through my insurance company (Safeco) to get someone out faster, and as it turned out they did.  He arrived around 1:45 pm, but was completely unequipped to remove the tires and fix my problem.  The insurance company, to whom which I went into painstaking detail about what was needed, told the tow company it was just a matter of re-inflating a car tire, not a truck tire.....doh for a third time!  Derek did show up at 2:45 pm, and as soon as he arrived I knew he was equipped to handle my problem.  He quickly confirmed that the bead was, indeed, separated from the rim, which would necessitate removing both wheels......

.....once the tire was off he was able to verify it was the air valve that was leaking, so he replaced it with a new one, reinstalled the tire on the rim, and then both tires back on the Newell......

Getting ready to reinstall the outside dualie tire

Finished!

.....in all it took Derek about 1.25 hours to fix the tire and reinstall everything.  He had barely left when I fired up the big Detroit Diesel 6v92, and we were off in a cloud of dust.....it was 4:10 pm.....over 5 hours later than we wanted to leave.  Our destination for the day was Oakridge, OR....about 146 miles in all.  We drove the last 70 miles in the dark....something I really hate to do.  We arrived at the RV park around 6:50 pm, and were in our site 15 minutes later.....why it took so long is another story, which I will relate tomorrow.

Thursday will be a big driving day for us....389 miles....down to Sparks, NV.....why so many miles?  Well, we are trying to outrun a winter storm, and get over Willamette Pass before it begins to snow there.  Another reason is we want to get south as fast as we can to get to warmer weather.

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