Under pressure

Grindstone Campground as of last

Sunday - an inauspicious ending to a

great experience.

Our situation at Mt. Rogers became somewhat fluid post closure of our campground. After originally being given at least a week from closure to leave, we were allowed to stay just four days.

This wouldn't have been a big deal save for the fact that once we knew we had a whole week left, Leonard and I made a few online purchases to be delivered to us at the campground. Come departure time, one package was still AWOL. Fortunately, a very kind, understanding U.S. Postal Service employee in Troutdale, VA offered to forward the parcel to my sister, who will then send it to me.

(What would the world be like without cooperative relatives?)

This tire pressure monitor lets us know

when the 5th-wheel's tires are low on air.

Thursday's exodus began smoothly enough. Thanks to a neat little towing maneuver shared by one of our fellow volunteers (a retired long-haul trucker), Leonard pulled Kong from our rather tight RV site without breaking a sweat – or hitting the assorted boulders, ditches and trees lining his route. We bade our Grindstone Campground buddies farewell and began our westward journey.

Then, as these things go, we hit a bit of a snag. It started pre-departure with the revelation that our 10-year old somewhat wimpy Craftsman air compressor was not long for this life. Even if it weren't about to crap out, it lacked the power to inflate Kong's heavy-duty Goodyear H-rated tires. Leonard cruised the information highway and found what looked like a suitable replacement: a more powerful Craftsman compressor. Once that compressor arrived, he gleefully headed out the door, pressure gauge in hand, expecting to add enough air to the tires to return them to safe towing levels.

High-quality tires make for
safer RV travel.

As with any vehicle, maintaining proper air pressure is vital to safe operation. Low pressure increases tire heat, which damages them – at best, reducing their lifespan, at worst, causing a blowout. Not good! High pressure can stress tires to the point of blowout. Again, not good!

Knowing this, Leonard spent about an hour lying on the cold ground trying to maintain the connection between various tire valves and the compressor nozzle, his arms nearly numb for lack of movement. He returned to the warm confines of our rig, his mission unfulfilled and declaring our newly-delivered tool to be, “a piece of shit!” It seems the compressor still wasn't powerful enough to fill our tires.

Pending identification of a suitable replacement, we agreed a viable solution for getting us safely out of Virginia would be to stop at the nearest travel plaza and pump those babies right up. That would have worked fine were it not for the fact that the first truck stop we hit positioned its air station in a place we couldn't reach, at least not easily; the next two had broken air pumps.

Our first stop after leaving Mt. Rogers was a nice little park

in Harriman, TN on the shores of Watts Bar Lake. Sweet!

Adding to the pressure we were feeling about our under-pressured treads was the fact that during one of our failed inflation stops Leonard discovered that one of the special tire sensors we'd purchased from our manufacturer, ostensibly to alert us in the event of a rapid deflation, was itself leaking air. What's more, the special wrench needed to remove the sensor was neatly tucked away inside Kong's cabinetry, access to which was made impossible by the fact that it lay behind the living room slide which, like all our slides, remained closed during transit.

After about 10 minutes of driving, we confirmed that Leonard's quick re-capping of the sensor had stopped the leak. Otherwise, we would have had to pull off somewhere – preferably in a spot large enough to open the living room slide – then dig out that special wrench, remove the sensor, close the slide, then return to our route.

On our second morning of travel, we located a travel plaza with a working pump, sufficiently increasing the pressure on our tires and decreasing the pressure on us.



Visitors to Yuma, TN can check out

the site where the Battle of Parker's

Crossroads.

As luck would have it, we arrived in Yuma, TN only to discover that our microwave oven was not getting any electrical juice. How it that lucky, you ask? Well, while the campground's RV technician assessed the situation, Leonard struck up a conversation about our compressor woes. Turns out the tech has the same Craftsman compressor as the one we were about to return to Sears and shared a tip that will make ours workable.

The U.S. South remains proud of its Confederate roots.

He couldn't fix the power issue, so it looks like we'll be making a stop in Dallas to get that fixed. C'est la guerre.

Our current road trip will take us through Tennessee and Arkansas. We hope to cross the Texas state line on Tuesday and reunite later in the week in the bustling metropolis of San Angelo with a couple of expat chums from our Costa Rica days. This reunion is further evidence that the world is getting flatter. Let's just hope the same won't be said of our tires.