“Bang! Thump… thump… thump…”
We’re in Missouri tonight, heading for Texas. We should be there sometime Friday evening. Today, I was driving and an ambulance going the other way on the freeway turned on its siren at the precise second it was passing me. I looked over (thinking a police officer had caught up with me - heh…) and also during that precise second, I hit something metal. We felt the RV bounce over it and and it was NOT a comforting sound. “Crash, bang, bang!” Ouch.
I pulled over at the next exit and we looked high and low but couldn’t see any damage - not even to the car behind the RV. So, we hit the road again.
About 20 miles later, we were on a section of freeway that I swear was the worst stretch of concrete I’ve ever been on. I mean the RV was just a bouncin’ and rockin’ and I thought the TV was actually going to come out of it’s cubby hole over our heads. I looked around and it didn’t look like any other cars were bouncing like we seemed to be doing.
Then, it stopped bouncing and a terrible, horrible noise started coming from the back of the RV and then stopped after a few severe thumps and bangs. And then…the strong smell of burning rubber. The children were freaking out pretty good, but I’d had a blow-out before and knew we weren’t “on fire.” I gently eased off at the next exit and pulled over. Sure enough, one of the tires on our double tire thingies (thank God there was another one to take the stress instead of just metal) had been damaged 20 miles back and finally blew.
There was a repair place just another mile up the road and they took us right in and we were back on the road only 2 hours later…and $500 poorer. But, we’re safe and it was an adventure!
Incidentally, I kind of figured out what might be happening on that “bumpy” stretch of highway but was kind of zoning out on denial, subconsciously hoping we weren’t about to have a blow-out. Duh…
The wifi connection at this campground is worse than poor so uploading photos is out of the question. I’ll try again tomorrow at the next campground.
September 29th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
glad everything worked out.
We will be joining you on the road as soon as the house sells. See ya!