This is the only image I was able to capture to document this incident. Of all the times for my Bloggie's battery to fail.
This is the hub that holds a hubcap and tire onto our Argosy. It's the rear wheel on the left hand side. As you can see, all six of the lug studs have been sheared.
We don't know why this happened - it was a brand new wheel. This is just the beginning of the weirdness, though. See, we did NOT notice that the wheel had left us. We had just made the turn from Highway 95 onto IH-35, and had gone just a few miles when a small blue car came up on the driver's side honking and pointing and looking really frantic. We pulled over, and she did, too - and when I walked up to her car, she told me a fantastic story of how our wheel had come off, and rolled off the road into a ditch and up the hill into the grass.
So there we were - missing a tire on the trailer, out in the middle of no where. We drove slowly to the next town, which turned out to be more of a village with a gas station and a barber shop and not much else. Heading back towards civilization, we were lucky to find a full service trucking tires & repair center, where we dropped the trailer and went in search of the tire.
Three hot and sweaty hours later, exhausted from walking up hills and into ditches searching for Loose Wheel (sing it with me, "You picked a fine time to leave us Loose Wheel.") we gave up and returned to the tire shop.
What can I say about that experience? Those tire folks were our heroes. They had to drive into Waco to find the parts needed, and they were smart about how they did it, taking no chances that they'd return with parts that wouldn't fit. Photos and samples from the other tire went with them.
They worked diligently and we were back on the road by 6:30 pm. The hard part of that day was that it was triple digits and we have no air conditioning in the van, so we had to get creative to keep the cats cool. I'm sure they didn't enjoy the day, but they didn't fight me when I wrapped them in wet towels and then fanned the towels to take advantage of the evaporation cooling.
So we finally pulled in to the RV park where we had a reservation at about 10:30 that night. I wanted to sit in the hot tub, but was too tired that night. In the morning, I discovered the pool and hot tub facility is under construction for an upgrade. So there was nothing to do but head on over to the casino for some breakfast.
While Tim and I were standing in line to get player's club cards for the meal discounts, a man handed Bob a coupon for a free breakfast as he was leaving and wasn't going to use it. Sweet! Breakfast buffet was $12 so that was quite the blessing.
We didn't walk out of there with tons of cash, but we did win enough little bits here and there to finance our playing. Kind of like the biblical story of the loaves and fishes, although we didn't walk out with 12 baskets full, we didn't miss out on any of the fun we'd planned on, despite the tire repair having essentially wiped out our fun money. WinStar at Thackerville is, depending on who you talk to, either the 3rd or 4th largest casinos in the world. I believe it - they've done a lot more building and it's even bigger than an Amazon fulfillment center, and that's saying a lot.
I can't say that the food is five star dining, though. It all seems a bit pricey and while it's decent, it never lives up to the price. We had 3 meals there, including a late lunch at the "Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill", and a light supper at the Palladium, and they were all over priced and at best OK. Nothing like the food at the Spa Casino in Palm Springs, which has the BEST buffet I've ever eaten at in my entire life.
Now we are in Coffeyville, and are trying to catch our breath and get our bearings. We've had another change of plans in that we've been reassigned from Inbound to Outbound, and will be working packing boxes for shipment if I understand correctly. Now this is the last place in the warehouse I'd ask to work, but in this case I'm kind of relieved, because my leg has been hurting something fierce with a sciatica issue, and I've been scared that I wouldn't be able to walk or climb stairs to the degree that I know is required. So I find out that I won't be walking nearly as much, and I won't be climbing stairs at all. My leg shouldn't prevent me from meeting my goals and obligations in this position. So once again, something that looks bad at first ends up being for the best.
I wish I could just totally grok this concept and completely stop judging things as being good or bad and just see how it unfolds.
This is the hub that holds a hubcap and tire onto our Argosy. It's the rear wheel on the left hand side. As you can see, all six of the lug studs have been sheared.
We don't know why this happened - it was a brand new wheel. This is just the beginning of the weirdness, though. See, we did NOT notice that the wheel had left us. We had just made the turn from Highway 95 onto IH-35, and had gone just a few miles when a small blue car came up on the driver's side honking and pointing and looking really frantic. We pulled over, and she did, too - and when I walked up to her car, she told me a fantastic story of how our wheel had come off, and rolled off the road into a ditch and up the hill into the grass.
So there we were - missing a tire on the trailer, out in the middle of no where. We drove slowly to the next town, which turned out to be more of a village with a gas station and a barber shop and not much else. Heading back towards civilization, we were lucky to find a full service trucking tires & repair center, where we dropped the trailer and went in search of the tire.
Three hot and sweaty hours later, exhausted from walking up hills and into ditches searching for Loose Wheel (sing it with me, "You picked a fine time to leave us Loose Wheel.") we gave up and returned to the tire shop.
What can I say about that experience? Those tire folks were our heroes. They had to drive into Waco to find the parts needed, and they were smart about how they did it, taking no chances that they'd return with parts that wouldn't fit. Photos and samples from the other tire went with them.
They worked diligently and we were back on the road by 6:30 pm. The hard part of that day was that it was triple digits and we have no air conditioning in the van, so we had to get creative to keep the cats cool. I'm sure they didn't enjoy the day, but they didn't fight me when I wrapped them in wet towels and then fanned the towels to take advantage of the evaporation cooling.
So we finally pulled in to the RV park where we had a reservation at about 10:30 that night. I wanted to sit in the hot tub, but was too tired that night. In the morning, I discovered the pool and hot tub facility is under construction for an upgrade. So there was nothing to do but head on over to the casino for some breakfast.
While Tim and I were standing in line to get player's club cards for the meal discounts, a man handed Bob a coupon for a free breakfast as he was leaving and wasn't going to use it. Sweet! Breakfast buffet was $12 so that was quite the blessing.
We didn't walk out of there with tons of cash, but we did win enough little bits here and there to finance our playing. Kind of like the biblical story of the loaves and fishes, although we didn't walk out with 12 baskets full, we didn't miss out on any of the fun we'd planned on, despite the tire repair having essentially wiped out our fun money. WinStar at Thackerville is, depending on who you talk to, either the 3rd or 4th largest casinos in the world. I believe it - they've done a lot more building and it's even bigger than an Amazon fulfillment center, and that's saying a lot.
I can't say that the food is five star dining, though. It all seems a bit pricey and while it's decent, it never lives up to the price. We had 3 meals there, including a late lunch at the "Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill", and a light supper at the Palladium, and they were all over priced and at best OK. Nothing like the food at the Spa Casino in Palm Springs, which has the BEST buffet I've ever eaten at in my entire life.
Now we are in Coffeyville, and are trying to catch our breath and get our bearings. We've had another change of plans in that we've been reassigned from Inbound to Outbound, and will be working packing boxes for shipment if I understand correctly. Now this is the last place in the warehouse I'd ask to work, but in this case I'm kind of relieved, because my leg has been hurting something fierce with a sciatica issue, and I've been scared that I wouldn't be able to walk or climb stairs to the degree that I know is required. So I find out that I won't be walking nearly as much, and I won't be climbing stairs at all. My leg shouldn't prevent me from meeting my goals and obligations in this position. So once again, something that looks bad at first ends up being for the best.
I wish I could just totally grok this concept and completely stop judging things as being good or bad and just see how it unfolds.
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