Posts from the Roads of America: Ventura to Indianapolis
The past week Kathleen (my wife and CEO) have been driving the motorhome from Ventura to Indianapolis. This has been a rather hurried drive: we're trying to stay ahead of the ice storm that is hitting the midwest, not a good thing to be in no matter what you're driving.
We tow the MGA on a dolly, and do nothing special to it for towing. I've read many posts at several web sites about MG towing, and the general consensus is that as long as the gear box has enough oil there should be no problems. So far this seems to be true: about 3000 miles of being pulled behind the motorhome (and another 1500 or so being driven around) and there are no discernable problems in the MG. Although the top does leak...
We had a bit of excitement in Texas: lost a tire on the dolly about 75 miles east of Dallas. This at the time that the NWS was issuing the ice storm warning and TDOT was busy closing interstates around Dallas. Our emergency road service could not get anyone to go out to the break down site and assist with a tire replacement - the only tow operator that called back told us and the ERS that "loading the dolly on the flatbed would damage the tow truck", so we dropped the dolly (after taking the MG off) and drove both to Wal*Mart to wait for a tire store to open in the morning.
Imagine our surprise when we returned to the dolly site to find the bad wheel and lug nuts missing! Apparently someone decided to "put dibs" on the dolly and stole the flat tire to prevent us from getting the dolly before they did. I pulled the good wheel, blocking the thieves from taking the dolly with their own trick, then had to purchase two new wheels and tires. Yeah, we could have used one, but I wanted a matched set - and I got a spare now. We got the tires on and retrieved the dolly in about 10 minutes: the most terrifying ten minutes I've spent on the side of the road, as cars and semis were litterally driving into ditches within a mile of where we stopped. Within an hour we were on our way to Shreveport and meterological safety!
IMPORTANT SAFETY TIPS
- Always carry a spare for ALL your tires - even a tow dolly. Buy the spare when you buy the trailer or dolly: it's cheap insurance.
- Always carry tools that allow you to change tires and remove road damage. I had to purchase a cheap set of air tools (the motorhome has a hefty air supply and chucks for hoses) to remove the tire, and had the thieves not removed the shredded dolly fender for me I would have needed a hack saw and cutters as well.
- If you have a choice of roads to take to a destination, take the route with the least potential weather hazzards. I decided to take I-20 instead of I-10 to save 8 hours of driving - and ended up having to drive two 10-hour stretches -AND- lose a day with the tow dolly in order to avoid the ice storm. I-10 would have been longer, but no worries about ice.
- If you have a motorhome, invest in a trucker's road atlas. Not only does it list all the truck plazas (most of which have 24 hour service centers), but it also tells you about low clearance hazzards and weight restricted bridges. Trust me: you don't want to sweat crawling under a 13'6" bridge with the suspension flat because you got caught just past the last cut-off. (Our motorhome is supposed to be 13'4" tall...but you can't trust bridge markings...)
I'm sitting at Tom Sawyer's campground just outside of Memphis (a nice place) having made it this far. Tomorrow we finish the trip with the last push to Indianapolis. Only a day late back to work...