Dallas to SD aka Blowouts, Rainstorms, and Ants (Oh My) – Part 1

I just got halfway through writing this post and it’s entirely too long so I’m breaking it up into two posts. This is part 1.

We are back in San Diego now safe and sound although the trip home was not entirely smooth sailing.

Bree and I are definitely inexperienced when it comes to the whole “RV thing” having no prior experience with it… but we’re not naive. We knew regardless of how much research we did that we were just going to have to get our feet wet and our real lessons and experience were going to be gained by a lot of trial by fire. Turns out we wouldn’t have to wait to long for lesson number 1. Even if your tires look OK, they may not be.

Sunday Sept. 12, 2010 – 6am: I can’t believe we are waking up before the sunrise… AGAIN.  This is so not my style. We’ve got a three day drive home planned ahead of us so we wanted to get an early start. This is suppose to be our longest day (12+ hrs) driving from here (Dallas) to Las Cruces, NM. I woke up with a nasty head cold that started hitting me yesterday. I only get really sick maybe about once every few years if that so this is not what I’d consider ideal timing. Bleh.

Bree starts off driving so I can try and rest a bit in the back as I’m really not feeling well. (Thanks Buno) After a few hours we decide to pull over and have some cereal and fruit for breakfast and then I take over driving. We’re not on the road very long before the RV starts feeling a bit “off” as I’m driving. In our short short time of RV ownership we’ve already realized that it’s never ever boring on the road because there are all sorts of new games to play. Games like “What’s that rattling?”, “How close did we just come to hitting that ______ (fill in object)?”, “Where’s that leak coming from?”, “Why did all the lights stop working?” and now the most pressing “OMG, what the BLEEP was THAT sound?”. After coming up with my immediate guess “I think we lost a tire” and immediately pulling over the side of road we got to find out first hand.

Now when I say road I mean Interstate 20 West going through a fairly boony part of the state of Texas. The shoulder was not exactly wide and humongo semi trucks were blowing past us and shaking everything like crazy. We got out to see that we had completely lost the tread on our inner left rear tire (ok, so that’s what that sound was) AND our right rear inner tire was blown out and flat also. Seriously? Double Blowout? (All the way….. what does it mean)

We go down the embankment to get off the road and away from the vehicle and thank goodness we have cell coverage. After calls to AAA, our insurance company, a few tow companies, and tons of tire stores looking for one that’s open on a Sunday and can actually work on an RV we find exactly 1 towing place and 1 tire place that is open, has our tire size, and can do the job. Whew!!!

As we are waiting for the tow truck the sun is getting hotter… and hotter… and hotter. We don’t want to wait in the RV so we see that there’s a solitary freeway sign on the embankment ahead that is creating a little square of shade that we decide to go stand in while we wait. The tow truck is coming from Abilene which is over 50 miles away so it’s going to be a while. We walk down the road through the Grasshopper Gauntlet. Bree has a, let’s call it a distaste, for flying insects of the Indiana Jones to snakes proportion. I’m happy to report that she made it through alive although a bit creepified. Poor thing.

So we get over to our little sign shade patch and whilst standing up there on the embankment in the grass I start feeling a little burning on my foot and look down to see a few ants crawling on me which I flick off. Over the next few days of increased burning, insanely intense itching, and these really awesome red bumps, turns out that my little friendly ant friends were actually fire ants and were giving me a lovely Texas au revoir. After telling my friend this story he informed me that when RV’ing through Texas as a child his grandparents told him that everything in Texas either stings you or bites you. Awesome.

(to be continued in Part 2)

Tally-Ho…

Ant Food,
Matt