We departed Santa Cruz Monday more or less on time. Jeremiah, myself, and Danny hitching a ride to Cheyenne Wyoming to go do horse things.
The shantyboat on the trailer is kind of ridiculously tall. Under the 14 foot legal limit, but just barely. On this trip, right out of the gate at one of our first stops we pulled under a service station awning and got stuck. It looked plenty high enough, but apparently not. In any stupid situation, a dozen people will instantly show up and aggressively offer tons of free advice, worth every penny. In this case, the suggestion was deflate your tires rather than ripping off the roof of both the shantyboat and the service station. And so we did, reinflating the tires afterward.
We made it up over the Sierras and the new truck proved its worth. We pulled into the first stop in Nevada sucking fumes and enjoying the mountain golden hour light.
Cruising along through the high plains of Wyoming, I caught in the sideview what looked like birds flying up from the trailer. What? No wait, there was something flying up from the tire. Mud? Not likely. I pulled over to check the tires.My experience is relatively limited, but I’m pretty sure tires are not supposed to look like this.
We limped the 25 miles into Rock Springs and found the good folks at Tire Den who immediately directed me to wedge the shantyboat roof into their garage door.
These are weird specialized wheels (usually used for mobile homes) requiring specialized tires. After a bit they’d replaced all four of the trailer tires and left us with a spare for a decent price. There may or may not have been a visit to TacoTime in there somewhere.
Apparently this is what tires are supposed to look like. Who knew?
We dropped Danny off in Cheyenne. She’ll join me on the river in late July with young ships mates Manzanita and Maybelle. Jeremiah and I came down out of the mountains into the plains driving in shifts through the night. We made it as far as Omaha.
After breakfast as we were about to hit the road, a lady in the car in front of us was irritatingly gesticulating at us. What could this lady possibly want? What was she trying to tell us? Another person who wants to stop us o give us an enthusiastic thumbs up about the shantyboat? Jeremiah went to see what she wanted. Oh. Our wheel was lying in the street next to the trailer.
