Part One

Securely holed up in our fortress of solitude in Minnesota, we get an urgent comunique via satcom transponders and cellular airwaves that our help is urgently needed in another part of the country.

"We need to see you" it said. And to make sure that we would arrive for sure it also said "Free beer and tacos!" We fell for it hook, line and sinker. With a quick download of the Global Positioning Satellite data, our slides went in and our anchor came up and we were moving towards the urgent distress call.

However, before we could head west, we had to go north to take care of some unfinished business. We finally sold Lisa's father's fifthwheel so we went to Moorhead to turn over the title to the new owners. Now his trust business can move forward finally. With that taken care of we headed south to start our journey. Our first day took us only 139 miles from our original starting point. Although it seems like we were in the truck all day because of our detour to Moorhead.We stopped in Watertown, South Dakota at a nice city park. That left us a long travel day to get to our next super secret undisclosed location.

Half way there we stopped in Pierre SD for lunch at the local Wallyworld parking lot. With vittles consumed we started to get moving again and I felt and heard a "thump, thump, thump". "Lisa we have a flat tire on the truck. One of the duals" I said.
To which she exclaimed, "Heavens to Betsy! I feel faint! However shall we proceed?"(really it was more like "oh shit!")

Taking the weight off of the truck.

I have never changed a tire on my truck before so this will be the first. I get the lug nut wrench out and start to apply the proper technique to remove them. It goes like this. Put lug nut wrench on, stand on lug wrench, push or jump down with all of your weight and wallah! Move to next one and repeat.

Getting dirty now.

I get all of the lug nuts off and have it jacked up and pull on the tire. It won't budge. So as I contemplate why that would happen, a couple pulls up next to us and asks if we needed help. Normally to change a tire I would say "no" but this time I said "yeah, maybe". The couple was Bill and Maria of Pierre SD. They plan on fulltiming in the near future.

Our saviors Bill and Maria.

Bill went to get some pry bars and bigger hammers while Lisa opened the slides and gave Maria a tour. They had lots of questions about fifthwheels and fulltiming and places we've been. They were even nice enough to offer us a place to stay if we didn't have to be somewhere else. With the help of Bill's pry bars and hammers we were able to get the tire off. It turns out that they rusted together and needed a little convincing to come off. I would not have been able to get them off on my own. So in the future I will have to get a bigger hammer and pry bar for the next time. Hopefully we have inspired them to go for their dream. They were very nice and helped a lot. Tire on, we said our goodbyes and headed west into the sunset.

Will we arrive at our next undisclosed location and where will that be? Stay tuned for the next installment boys and girls.

 To be continued..............