Day 15 – Sunday Sept. 15th 2013. - POOF and it was GONE!

Last night (Saturday) we camped overnight at the Wal-Mart at Brattleboro, New Hampshire. We spent the day travelling there through (Albany) New York and the beautiful state of Vermont landing here just inside the state of New Hampshire.

New York is a beautiful state but it has nothing over Vermont!
Wow what a beautiful and quaint little state. Lots of little towns and villages. That New England look and feel is something that is just hard to describe! The buildings, architecture and the overall feel just makes you feel like your traveling through a photograph!

New Hampshire feels much the same as Vermont, nothing really changes except for the name.

So why the title of today’s Blog you ask?

We were still in New York just one mile east of Cobleskill on the freeway. I had to stop a few miles back to re-adjust the braking device on the Honda that we tow (The Toad) and had pulled over onto the shoulder for the quick adjustment.

As we continued east bound on the Freeway a car past us in the fast lane and pulled right in front of us! 

I voiced my displeasure out loud and after doing so he began pointing to the right shoulder. He turned on his right signal light and it was obvious I needed to follow him onto the shoulder. Once stopped he ran back to us and told me that I had a flat right rear tire on the (Honda) car we were towing. He said it’s down to the wheel which is running on the road! 

I thanked him and he was on his way.

I got out and made my way back to the Toad. I could barely believe my eyes. There was no tire left on the right rear! All that was left was a thin scrap of hot, stinky, burnt rubber around the wheels edge. You could see the inside of the wheel itself!

Not much left of this tire! scary!

You can see almost all the rubber is gone!

The inside of the wheel is showing.
Thankfully we were able to save the wheel and no damage to the car.

It must have been a sight to see going down a freeway?

My years of race car experience allowed for a quick pit stop and tire change!

As thankful as we were, you can see I was not impressed...

I was wondering how we did not even feel this happening? Barb reminded me that a couple of miles back we wondered if we had felt a small gust of wind hit the side of the rig, which is common. We had wondered about this, as it has been such a calm day. Whether that was it or not I was so thankful this man had stopped us to tell us what had happened. 

It could have been so much worse if we continued on, not knowing about the flat. The scraps of rubber would have worn off and the wheel would have been in full contact with the road eventually coming apart itself into a hundred pieces. 

My real worry was how this could have caused more serious damage to the Honda. Perhaps a serious wreck with the Honda, motorhome and whoever else was nearby and we hadn’t even felt a thing!

We had seen a gadget for sale in the past called a Tire Monitor. 

Out of all the people we have met in motorhomes over the last two (now our 3^rd) winters I have never known any of them to own one. The monitor mounts onto the dashboard of the motorhome and a sensor mounts onto the valve stem of each of the four tires on the car you are towing.

These sensors will then let you know by way of an alarm if a tire is losing air pressure. This would not have prevented the blowout but it would have prevented us continually driving on a tire/wheel that wasn’t there should no one warn us what had happened.

These Tire Monitors are not cheap but after having had this occur I think it might be a must have gadget for safety. We will be researching this further.

Today we continued travelling on to Nashua, New Hampshire as it was the closest Costco to where we were in New York where this all happened. Apparently Costco isn’t all that common here. 

I should note here that we were not able to go over 50mph (80kph) with the compact spare tire on the Toad. It seemed like it took forever to get anywhere and the traffic was running all over us on the freeways. Stressful and tiring.

I had just bought 4 new tires for the Toad at Costco back home in June (only 3 months old). It appeared from the receipt (we had it with us) for them that we had a Road Hazard Warranty. Hopefully Costco would replace the blown tire?

Finally we got to Costco in Nashua and guess what (it just keeps getting better) they stopped carrying our particular brand of tire (BF Goodrich) anymore. 

In fact he told me they quit carrying them about the same time that I had bought mine! He tried to see if he could get me one but he then found out it would be several days before it was delivered.

Thankfully they agreed to a refund!
They measured the tread wear on one of the other tires and gave me a 90% pro-rated cash refund! I was thankful for that but still needed a replacement tire and I really didn’t want to buy a tire that didn’t match the other 3 new ones. Koodo's to Costco for their included Road Hazard Warranty! Most places charge you for this. I wouldn't have paid for it as I have never had a flat in millions of miles of travel. I guess I was over-due?

After this at about 4pm (just before closing) we stopped at a Sears Tire Centre down the road from Costco. Thankfully they carried my tire and it was in stock. Within a half hour they had it installed and we were on our way. It cost me $36.00 difference (from the refund) and I was once more a “Happy Camper!” What a day!

So as the stress wound down from this experience we decided we needed to get the tires on the motorhome replaced ASAP. 

We’ve been planning on doing this since last winter’s trip and putting it off any longer just feels like a really bad idea.

This is no small feat as they are large tires and regular tire shops do not carry them nor can they install them. There’s nothing wrong with these motorhome tires they are like new tread wise (now only 24,000 miles). However they are now 11 years old and the sidewalls are cracking from the sun’s rays beating down on them all those years. After the recent near mishap we don’t want to take any chances on another one.

In search of these large and not so common tires we then travelled north from Nashua through two toll booths (You know how much I love that!) and pulled in to a Camping World store just on the north side of the city of Concord in Chichester, NH. They were closed by the time we got there so we decided we would camp in their parking lot. 

As you know I hate paying for a campground to simply park and get up in the morning to leave again. It simply seems like a waste of money!

Before calling it a day we un-hooked the Toad and decided to go out for some much needed Chinese Food. What a feast!

We’ve learned travelling that when hungry, look for packed parking lots, police cars or truckers eating there. If you have any of those you likely have great food and great service. It worked for us tonight and my belly is happy and full. We even had some left over to take home for lunch tomorrow.

Back at Camping World; the generator gets turned on, the TV antenna goes up and Barb finds some TV shows to watch and un-wind with.

In the morning we will be up at 7 am (I hope) as the store opens at 8 and hopefully we can get a decent deal on 6 more tires for the motorhome. I won’t tell you how much those will cost – it would scare you from ever owning one!

I want to buy the tires in NH, as it’s one of two states we have found in the USA that don’t have Sales Tax. The other state is Oregon but that’s a little far for us right now! J

We are hoping that this will be the last of the excitement for our journey. That was getting a little too close to even think about what the outcome could have been.

So in closing for the night and on a high note – we hope you all had a great weekend - sweet dreams everyone!