Monday, August 11, 2008

Time to leave New England. Yesterday we drove to Boston and took a tour of “Old Ironsides”, The USS Constitution. That boat has some serious cannons. 32 of the big ones, each one weighs more than an F-31, on a trailer, fully rigged, with me on board. The guide said that the USS Constitution is the only team from Boston that has never been beaten, I was amused.

Today we got started a little late after stopping at West Marine to pick up some spare trailer lights. As it happened, that wasn’t really the spare that we needed, so far. Around Providence RI. I felt the familiar whacketa, whacketa, whacketa, of a trailer tire dying.
By the time I got off the road it was dead, and unrecognizable, even by its own rubber tree. Orion now has knowledge in tire changing, with the added challenge of doing in the rain. Much quicker this time due to the fact that it was the same relative tire that died on the way up. The lug nuts were well lubricated and not overly tightened on either the tire or the new spare. No problem, on down the road we went. In less than an hour, atop a large bridge in New London, CT. an explosion rang out, with the tell tale clunking of something banging the underside of the Suburban. Gee, I wonder what that was? As the sidewall of the right rear tire began to disintegrate after the blow out, the drivers side began to ride a little lower, and lower, and lower… The first space I found suitable for tire wrestling was a cul-de-sac of housing for the low income aged. They were very helpful, giving us directions to multiple tire stores and one guy even led us to one, since he was going that way anyway. Getting the tire of the truck is different than the trailer, different jack, different issues, similar pain in the ass. The lug nuts on the tire were tight, however, I remembered a breaker bar that I carry in the boat. The gin pole! (Especially since it was reinforced with an inner pole as a recall by Corsair). We could torque the lug nuts on Catapiller D9G with that thing. The tires on the Suburban are somewhat oversized, so a direct replacement was not available, they were more off road tires any way.  So now the Suburban has four new paws, and the Loose Cannon cockpit is full of 3 very large rubber, large treaded, bargains for somebody, I hope. The good news is that we only had to go to one tire store to get new tires for the truck and another new spare for the trailer. We found a pizza place that had delicious “grinders”. The tire store threw in an alignment for a reasonable price and in two hours we were on our way again feeling very load range D confident, technically aligned and balanced, and extremely well rotated.

Now it is some 7 hours later, we are somewhere in New Jersey, and the feeling of having been rotated persists.

-wb-