Two days ago I'm driving between Cottonwood and Sedona, AZ in the "slow lane" and I start feeling thump, thump, thump from my rear passenger tires. I slowed down and looked in the side mirror and saw something black flying out from the back of The Palms. I thought I had a shredded tire. As I was pulling off onto the side of the road, the drive was smooth again. Weird.
I got out and checked the tires as well as I could on the side of a highway, and didn't see any issues. So I walked back along the road looking for what came flying out of my tires. I found a bunch of chunks of black rubber that were from a tire right about where I saw the flying black stuff, and I collected them.
I drove slowly down 89A until I came to a place I could pull off the road and do a better check on the tires. I couldn't find anything wrong, inside or outside, with the tires.
I also got out two new TPMS batteries and installed them. One tire was fine, but the other was showing ZERO PSI. It wasn't the battery, because if the battery is bad, the readout shows two dashes, and this showed "O" PSI. That was pretty scary! It was the inside rear dual tire on the passenger side.
I bought the tires at Discount Tire in Yuma, so I drove slowly back to Cottonwood to the Discount Tire store. Unfortunately they were closed since it was Sunday, and I drove on to Walmart to shop and noticed their tire store was open. I drove up and they checked the pressure, and it was, indeed, empty of air. They aired it up and looked at the tire pieces I picked up on the side of the road. He said the pieces were from large big rig tires, so that was good!
I decided to spend the night in Cottonwood at the nearest dry camping spot - by Thousand Trails - a mile or two down the road. The next morning the pressure in that tire had gone from 65 the day before, to 27 pounds, and I went back to Discount Tire and asked them to examine my rear tires for damage. He took off the two passenger side tires and the inside one had a large bolt stuck in it. He fixed the tire for me and then examined all four rear tires, which were good, put the proper PSI into each, didn't charge me a cent, and I was on my way down the road. What a relief!
I'm back in the Coconino Forest again until my 14 days are up. Nice site, I've met a couple of nice people camped nearby, and everything is good again. I'm SO glad I ran over that piece of big rig tire which caused me to stop, which caused me to replace the bad batteries in my TPMS sensors right then. Who knows how long it could have been before I checked the tire pressure if I didn't have a TPMS. I wouldn't have known my inside tire had a bolt in it, and had no air in it. I could have ended up with a blown tire going fast on a freeway, an accident, who knows?
Lately I've had some issues that were serious and had to be fixed, repaired, checked, etc. immediately for my safety and comfort. It can be stressful when that happens. You have to do what's necessary right now, but then when the problem is fixed, the sky is blue again, the sun is shining and all is well. That's how I feel after getting the tire fixed. And this time, it didn't cost me $$$!
I always think these kinds of things keep my mind sharp, too. LOL
Below are photos from one of my sites in Cottonwood - first (no surprise) a cow having a munch lunch - she was grazing all over the place:
And one of those Walking Stick insects - this guy was really big. I was leaving my site and saw him. I didn't want to drive with him on my tire, and he wouldn't get off. So I had to pick him up in the center of his long body and was surprised that he was really soft, like a little green worm. I guess since he looked like a stick I was expecting him to have a hard body.
And finally the beautiful sky one evening as the sun was going down. Sure do love these Arizona skies:
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