Epilogue to When is a Problem a Problem by Lee

Hi there, for those of you who I put to sleep in my earlier blog entry about the shocks and tires and air bags, oh my! And even those who persevered through it, I wanted to take this brief opportunity to fill you in on my theory why I lost those two tag tires. Apparently, my shocks must have been on their last legs when I left Maine and I'm pretty sure that for the couple thousand miles to Duluth, MN, they were losing most of their oil and therefore their efficacy. In other words, the spring in their good days sprung and went elsewhere. In any event, we left Duluth, MN and went up I29, crossed the border and continued on Canada 75. Do you remember those vibrating motel beds, where you'd put in the quarter and bounce around happily until your time was up? That's what it felt like particularly on CA 75. Every 20-25 feet you'd hit an expansion joint in the concrete (which over decades without repair had heaved) and you'd feel the impact each time. Well then, you can just imagine what my tax axle was doing with little or no shock action to keep the those two tires on the road surface. Or, another way to look at it was that it was whack-a-mole in reverse. With essentially no shocks to prevent it, that tag axle would make contact, lose a nice chuck from the tire and this repeated itself for at least 200 miles. And up front, we didn't feel a thing, so good is the suspension and air bag system. So, that be my theory and I'm sticking by it (unless you have another, I'm all ears). Now, I turn you back to the real maestro of this blog, Linda. She writes nice, doesn't she? Dawson City tomorrow. We finally made it!