At Least the Beer Wasn’t Flat
June 2, 2024 – Day 79
Kalona City Park, Kalona City Iowa
We just hung out today, played some games probably, blogged — maybe. It’s just that now a more than a week after we got home we can’t remember. That’s what happens when the travel switch flips and you start stringing long travel days together. We do remember dinner though. And that the special thing over in Riverside, IA was closed tomorrow.
Finding good pizza on the road can be a challenge. Based on reviews, we headed over to have dinner at the Kalona Brewing Company. On the way over the TMPS beeped, “low pressure.” We can still roll with 26 psi so neither of us were concerned. This happened before on a different tire back in Vernal UT. Probably more of the same, right? Back to pizza! Susan got the Margherita and Paul got the Italian Sausage version. We both agreed that Susan’s was the better of the two but both of the pizzas and the beer were fantastic! And it was just what we wanted! This was the downer that greeted us after we left the restaurant. Not quite what either of us expected.
Paul tried putting the spare on but he bent the Jeep supplied lug wrench (susan’s edit) sorry excuse for a lug wrench that came with the Jeep. We knew for sure that the lug nuts hadn’t been over tightened. Paul and his friend Glenn rotated the tires jusd before the trip and they had correctly set the lug nut torque with a torque wrench. And if a bending lug wrench wasn’t fun enough? While trying to get the lugs off the cheap Jeep lug nuts, the ones that Paul had considered replacing, failed. They have a chrome cap which fails under high load to make sure you don’t get warranty service for bent rotors for over tightened lug nuts. The odd thing is, he usually carries a breaker bar and the proper size socket with him. The socket was in the tool bag, but not the breaker bar!
We had no other way to change the tire so we called CoachNet, our roadside assistance company that covers our cars as well as the RV. About 20 minutes after the initial call they called back, apologizing. They couldn’t find anybody to come out until the next morning! Remember, it is Sunday night and we’re in the middle of nowhere. Fabulous. So what do we do now!?
They said they would keep trying to find someone but realistically we’re in the middle of nowhere and that just wasn’t going to happen. But we waited some. Paul called the county sheriff to see if maybe they would be able to dispatch a cruiser with a breaker bar. They can’t but they give us a number of a towing company! Paul called and left a voicemail message that was quickly returned. He’s about 45-60 minutes out on a job but would be able to swing by afterwards. Just a few minutes later, he called back again. He has a coworker in town who can stop by in about 10 minutes. The coworker swung by, saw what he needed to get for tools, zipped out and back in maybe 7 or 8 minutes and swapped out the flat for the spare tire. We were saved!
The funny thing is, he used a cordless impact driver to remove the lug nuts. We had one back in the RV which was about a 1/2 mile away! Paul could have walked home, grabbed the impact driver, and changed the tire himself. But…once we got back to Keene Paul noticed the impact driver in the garage. We had brought our cordless drill not the impact driver. He’s especially glad he didn’t make the walk back to the RV to grab the tool that wasn’t there!