Two new tires and five hundred and forty dollars later we had some new wheels. This whole fiasco had me questioning the American automobile industry. Here’s a vehicle closing in on 50k and equipped with a $20 doughnut spare. It’s attached under the chassis by a wire that cranks it up into place. One would think in spending this kind of money on a vehicle, our ingenuity could muster some better engineering than our overseas competitors. The best part of this detterent was meeting Oscar, the gentleman who actually did the work on the vehicle. I had never met anyone with such a positive attitude, constantly smiling, and reiterating how much he enjoyed life. It always takes someone I would least expect to reinforce to me what is important in life. In less than an hour, Oscar had us back on the road. It was a long journey and North Carolina, Virgina, and West Virginia weren’t pleasant to motorists, slowing traffic to an average of 50 mph. Nevertheless, we’ve finally arrived. It will be great to see family again.

We got a decent start today. Had everything packed, slides and awning in, and deisel warmed up by 9:30. We parked the rig on the storage lot and by 10 we were headed to Gainesville, trading driving positions every hour. We thought this would deter boredom. We left a day early in anticipation of bad weather. Good thing we did. BOOM! At 3 o’ clock the right front tire simply blew a hole in the side. Not an issue. Finding the tools and then lowering the spare doughnut proved to be a major undertaking given the car was packed with holiday gifts. In a half hour the doughnut was mounted and we pulled off just north of Savannah after Robin fired up here I Pad and found a tire shop. Lo and behold, they had no 20 inchers. So here we sit in a Knights Inn while awaiting two new tires by morning. Good thing we’re in no hurry.