“I believe that if you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.” — Eddie Rickenbacker
Gypsy Lee -- my RV's named after my mother's maiden and my middle name and my itchy feet -- is once again ready for the road. She's pictured here resting for the journey at lake Walcott State Park. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Travels With Maggie
I was just outside of Baker City, Oregon, when disaster struck. The left rear tire on my RV exploded, strewing rubber all along the highway. Thankfully, I managed to get the vehicle safely to the side of the road. In six years, and 110,000 miles of travel, this was my first roadside emergency – well if I don’t include getting stuck in the mud in my daughter’s Dallas backyard.
I immediately called my Good Sam emergency road provider, telling them first that I was safe, then where I was and that the only spare I had was for my front tires, which are a different size from the rear ones. I knew I could be in trouble because my RV sits atop a Volkswagen Eurovan chassis and its tires are not common. The voice on the phone, however, assured me that he would get me help and to hang tight while he made some calls.
Twenty minutes later, he called back, saying he had located a tire for my vehicle, but that it would be a couple of hours before it could be picked up and delivered to me. At this point, I thanked my guardian angel for both the tire, and that I was stuck on the side of the road in Oregon, where the temperature was only 72, instead of my native Texas, where it was in the high 90s with humidity just about as high.
Knowing help was on the way, I opened my RV windows to take advantage of a gentle breeze and settled in with a good book for the duration. Thirty minutes later, however, an emergency roadside service guy turned up with my tire
Maggie hopped onto our bed and snoozed the disaster away. -- Photo by Pat Bean
– or so we both thought. Turns out he discovered he had the wrong tire after he had jacked up my RV. He left to go get the right tire, but 20 minutes later he returned red-faced to retrieve his jack. Seems he not only had the wrong tire, he had the wrong customer. His guy, now angry at the delay, was still waiting up the road.
It was another hour and a half before my service provider showed up with the tire for my RV. It was only a 4-ply passenger tire, however, that I would need to quickly replace. That took two weeks and a lot of searching. Rusty, the manager at an auto repair shop in Ogden, Utah, where I get my RV serviced when I’m in town, finally located a pair of 10-ply tires in San Jose, California, that would work. He had them shipped to Ogden, where a friend of mine picked them up and brought them to me at Walcott State Park in Idaho, where I’m currently a volunteer campground host.
I had the tires mounted at a tire store in nearby Rupert – and am looking forward to getting back on the road again next week. Hopefully my journey will be trouble free – but if it’s not, the journey will still be worth any problem the road throws at me. Life’s too short to worry about what might happen.
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