AAAAGGGGHHH. It was one of those days. We left Nashville around 06:30 AM and headed West on
I 24. As we got out of the city, the fauna turned into the beautiful scenery that we talked about yesterday, so we settled down and took in all in. About three hours later, Nita took over driving for her shift---two hours on and two off, when the front right tire went flat. One of the two I had trued and balanced yesterday. Nita held on while we got off the road. She did extremely well without freaking out. Proud of her. The truck helped stabilize the bus as she slowed down and got off the road. Luckily, we were in front of a truck weighing station and a mile marker and that made it easier to describe to the Good Sam dispatcher where we were. The service truck was there within 20 minutes and had us on our way within another 30 minutes. Dan, the service man, was a real professional. He said he had been doing this for thirty years. To watch him work was comforting.
On the road again
We had bought a spare tire in Nashville when we had the front ones re balanced to carry as a spare and "boy" was it ever a savior We determined that the flat was caused by poor maintenance by the tire company. They failed to securely tighten the valve stem and it vibrated loose due to the poor re-balancing work. Paduka, KY was only 36 miles ahead so we figured we would stop there and get the new (used) tire balanced. They couldn't do it so we had to drive another three hours to St. Louis, MO to get it taken care of. The company in St Louis was another branch of the company in Nashville. They looked at the rim and were shocked at the way Nashville had balanced the tire The old weights were not removed and they (apparently) just left them on and added more weights. Since the other front tire had been treated the same way and it was out of line / trim and was eroding ( eating away unevenly) we bought two new tires and had them installed. Unfortunately, we still have a vibration in the front of the bus and we'll have to have it looked at soon.
Fields of ????
St Louis
So, off to Branson once again. Having been up since 5:30 AM I was beat, the hours were getting long, the roads were getting more and more mountainous, the Southwestern sun kept blinding me and later the night lights glared at me, so we stopped in Springfield, MO and spent the night in a Walmart Parking lot along with several other trucks. Thursday morning we finished the trip and joined our RV club friends in Branson
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