June 13th

We wake up again to the sound of leaf blowers. Have some toast a shower and we pack up camp. Grandma Jean says goodbye and heads home. We head to the city of Cincinnati.

We don't get 2 miles out of the park and I hear POP! Followed by a hiss. I look behind and the trailer has a flat. We pull in to a parking lot.

I seem to remember a conversation when we picked up the rolling schmidthouse. "The trailer dosen't have a jack. Those jacks on the side are for leveling, not for changing a tire."

Oops, did I pack the bottle jack? No. This could be a problem. I start losening the lug nuts. This fellow comes walking up behind us with a floor jack. We pull the tire off I expected to see someone's souvenir sticking out of the tire. That is not what I saw. The tread on the inside of the tire was down through the cords. That would do it.

I check the tire on the other side. It is wearing on the inside as well. We get the spare on and start making phone calls to see where we can get someone to look at this.

Fleetwod first gives me a Toledo dealer. We ain't going to Toledo, and he can't look at until Tuesday. We call back and get a Dealer in Cincinnati. We call and they suggest a guy in Dayton, they can't look at till Monday. After several tries we get a hold of someone in Dayton who says "We don't do tires. We forward all our tires to another guy." Ok we need a new tire because we don't have a spare and while Alisa calls the Cincinnati guy back again I ask Maggie to take us to this tire shop.

The skys darken, the rain is heavy, cars and trucks are pulling off the highway. "Can you find a news talk station?" I ask Alisa.

She opens our book of all the radio stations in the country and tunes one in. As some singer is carrying on, in Spanish I ask, "is this a talk station?"

Alisa answers "it's supposed to be a Christian station."

"Can you look up a news talk station, please" I say back, trying to hide my frustration.

We get one just as the top of the hour break comes on. "A possible tornado has touched down on the Green County Line" says the announcer.

"Where is Green County?" I ask Alisa, this time I hope I am not hiding my urgency because I can't see 3 feet ahead of me.

"It looks like it is a little north of us" She says. "Wait what county did they just say it was heading too? Oh that is right by where we are going."

In NASCAR they use a trick to stay out of a crash. Go to where the crash started. By the time you get there the cars will be gone. I hope the same thing works with tornadoes.

Once the next update happens Alisa pinpoints the line they are talking about and it was north of us and was moving north. That's good.

We made it to the tire shop. Decided to buy another spare. I wanted to keep the old tire. If there is a warranty issue I wanted them to see it. They placed the old tire on the junk pile. While their backs were turned I picked my tire up and stuck it in the back van.

We checked the other tire and there was now a lot of wear on that side. The guys took that tire off and put the new spare on.

We paid to have the wheels balanced. They didn't do that. I called Alisa, who was still at the front, and asked "Did they charge for balance?"

"Yes, it was 10 bucks." she answered.

"Well they didn't do it." I mentioned. "It went from the tire machine to the trailer.

She got the money back.

We arived at our campground and it started raining. The kids found shelter in the game room, while I braved the rain. I got to the point where I crank up the top and make an awful discovery. The tire shop had mounted the spare so I can't crank the top up.

I go to take off the spare and they had used the air gun. To add to the fun the tire had a resess and the tire iron would not connect enough to get the bolt lose.

Maggie finds us a AutoZone where I get a deep well socket that is skinny enough to get in the resess and ratchet.

The last couple of times I went to an auto parts store the people helping pointed out the cheapest parts. I mentioned that I was going to buy the 1/2" ratchet because I don't have one at home and already have a breaker bar. What does the guy point out, the breaker bar. Back in Arizona when I was buying brake pads the said they are 14 bucks. I don't trust 14 dollar brake pads.

We get back and with the help of a rubber mallet I get the spare off and get the camper up.

Sleep, sleep I need sleep. It comes quickly

Coming Monday - What's wrong with the axle. I hope the shop can tell us and they can fix it. I don't want to buy new tires every 400 miles. We have 2,000 miles to go! But it is Friday, we are getting behind now.