MowryJournal.com   Life's Passions

The Board Chronicles is an ongoing series of articles about the adventures of Mrs M’s Handmade as a vendor at community festivals & craft fairs. Mrs M’s subsidiary, Mr M’s Woodshop, has been approved to create this chronicle for the good of vendorkind.

There I was, settling into a long drive home from the World’s Oldest Rodeo. Prescott, AZ had not been kind to me on this trip (read the event review, here), and I was 400+ miles from home.

I had elected to take the northern route home (I-40 to I-15) instead of the southern route (I-10). The southern route takes me across 50 miles of absolutely nothing desert before I get to the freeway, and I just don’t like the drive. The northern route is about 40 miles longer, but I like the drive more.

So there I was, 30 minutes out of Prescott on Arizona 89 North. It’s a 2 lane blacktop, connecting to I-40.

I felt the trailer fishtail a bit, so I checked the side mirrors.

The semi behind me was flashing his lights.

There was smoke in the right side mirror.

This is bad. Very bad.

I pulled over immediately. Here’s what I saw:

The tire was shredded. When the tire came apart, the flailing rubber pieces caught the aluminum fender and bent it back underneath itself. The white side of the trailer was marked by all of the revolving rubber pieces. The tire totally came apart.

Why? Who knows. Maybe it was a blowout. Maybe I hit something. Maybe the tire was tired of carrying an overloaded trailer and decided to teach me a lesson. I don’t know … but I do know that my spare tire is now required to get me home, and I need help to get it on the trailer. Thank goodness for AAA (which Mrs M insisted we get last year, by the way).

So I call AAA, and am told that 1) my policy doesn’t cover changing a tire on my trailer and 2) the person I called was in California, and I need to talk to an Arizona person. I was told I would have to pay cash to the tow truck driver. Oh, joy. She then transferred me … and I was disconnected.

Strike 1.

I called back, and got a different person that could help me. She had a great deal of difficulty with my location. “What city are you in? What’s your address? Your cross streets?” All very reasonable questions … and I had no answer. I was 21 miles south of I-40 on AZ 89 N. That I knew, from the GPS. Other than that … there was nothing visible but highway, junipers and brown grasses as far as the eye could see.

Nothing else.

I knew I had gone through Chino Valley after leaving Prescott, and knew I’d gone by a post office a while after that. Eventually, the AAA lady decided she knew where I was, and told me help would be there within 3 hours (sigh).

I then got a call from another lady, from the designated tow company out of Flagstaff. She asked me where I was … and, yup, we had to do the whole routine again. She eventually decided that I was outside of their territory, and she told me someone else would be coming to help. Not her territory.

Strike 2.

I noticed it was getting hot, so I decided to get a folding chair out of the trailer and set it up in the shade of a convenient Juniper bush, about 10 yards off of the highway. It was very nice in the shade, but the temperature was only going to go up.

15 minutes later, I got a text that help was on the way.

Then Officer Krumm of the Arizona Highway Patrol stopped by to see if I needed assistance. I told him I was fine – and learned that he and his wife had visited my booth at Prescott Frontier Days! His wife, a seasoned trail cook, he said, really liked my cutting boards! I did ask where I was. Come to find out, there were mile markers on the highway and I was near mile marker 241. Paulden was the nearest community … and the cement plant in Drake was just up the road. I was on the edge of the Coconino National Forest, I’ve since learned.

Pro tip: you can always call 911, and then have them give you the GPS coordinates of the call, which you can then relay to AAA for roadside service … if you should ever find yourself on a remote highway on the edge of a National Forest without a cross street!

I was not lost.

About a half hour later, the tow truck driver showed up. He surveyed the situation, rolled out his mechanic’s jack, and changed my tire. Come to find out, the tread of the tire had wound itself around the axle after it detached from the shreds of the tire still on the rim, so he had a bit of a struggle to clean it all up. No worries: the tire got changed, and in the end, I was back on the road with only a 90 minute delay.

The driver only asked for my signature. I did not have to pay cash for the tire changing service.

Next stop: I went to the next gas station to check the inflation of the trailer’s tires, and the newly mounted spare was indeed low. $1 of air later, I was on my way across the Mojave & back to home in Valencia, CA.

• I visited my local AAA office, and the clerk there confirmed that I needed “RV” level coverage to get roadside assistance for my cargo trailer. Further, my “classic” level of coverage only provided 7 miles of towing, should that be required … and I know I was way more than 7 miles from a garage on this latest trip. I upgraded to Plus membership as well. Pro-rated, that was $53.09 to upgrade to the additional coverage, good until next February.
• My tire store carries trailer tires, and I have an appointment tomorrow to get both my old tire & my shredded remnant replaced. The spare will … go back to being a spare. $285.
• My trailer retailer will inspect the trailer, and I’ve got an appointment Friday for them to replace the broken fender, repair the running light and get the trailer back to good condition. I don’t have an estimate on that cost yet, but I’m certain it’ll be more than a dollar.

More

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