Re-tired!

Or, I could title this one as "headed for Bou-se, only made it out to Needles" for the Three Dog Night fans out there.

When I did my morning walk-around, the outside tire on the driver's side seemed a tad bulgier on the bottom than it should be.  Sure enough, inside tire was flat.  No issue, I have a spare, the weather was warm (well, a little cooler in the morning so I switched back to long pant for the job), and the pavement was new and smooth.  The only annoyance was the 50 mph wind, but it was coming from the other side of the mh so I was in the lee.  Easy-peasy.  Here's the tire in case anyone's wondering why I didn't try to put a plug in.

So, loaded it up in the Jeep and headed south, figuring to get a new tire in Parker on Monday when the shops opened.  After all, this is only the second time I've ever had to use the spare, so what are the odds of having another flat the same day?

Apparently, pretty good.  I wound up missing a turn in Fort Mohave and heading down through California, which isn't a huge deal since it's about the same distance either way.  Anyway, about 6 miles south of Needles we had a significant BANG, and the culprit turned out to be the inside dual on the OTHER side.  We limped it to a wide area to pull off, and Wendy stayed with the mh while I took off back to Needles in the Jeep to try to find a tire shop open on a Sunday with the right size tire.

Long story short, the Gods were smiling and the tire guys at the Needles Shell station were open and doing nothing.  Not only that, but they gave me a pretty good deal on 4 tires (since I now needed two anyways, may as well change all the drive axle.  Proud of me Jack?).  Switched over the one, and I headed back out to change it and bring the motorhome back.  Got back to the Shell about 45 minutes later and they finished changing over all the drive tires.  In the process we found that there really wasn't a decent tire to keep as a spare, so I bought a 5th matching tire for that.  We left Needles about $1400 lighter in the wallet, but overall happy to have new skins all the way round now (steering tires were replaced before the last trip south) and feeling fortunate to have been able to get this all done on a Sunday during the holidays.  We also felt much more fortunate that some other poor soul who rolled his car about 20 miles south of Needles - the ambulance and fire truck went out while we were at the tire shop.  A little perspective is always handy.
Anyway, once we were re-tired in Needles we headed back over to the Arizona side on I-40 to continue to Bouse the "old" way.  Topped up the propane in Parker and made it to Bouse about 6 PM or so.  So our "short day" turned somewhat longer, but everything worked out in the end.