There's no air in there

If you know or understand me you'll know I'm the guy who checks and rechecks and then has another check just to make sure. I'm a prepared guy, or work towards being as prepared as I can be and phrases like "one is none and two is one" actually mean something to me. That phrase actually means have back-ups just in case you're wondering.

But sometimes it doesn't matter how much effort goes into preparation and planning, things still go wrong - Of course, there's plans around things going wrong too, but that doesn't always make it better when they actually do go wrong.

This went wrong yesterday.

I left home just before 0700 heading north and west for a 650 kilometre drive to a camping destination; It's been eighteen months since I've been away and I felt the need to get away, see something different and turn off for a while so to speak.

I spent the week getting things organised, I like to be prepared as you know. All the equipment and gear was stowed and I was pretty sure I'd covered all bases - I was good to go. I hooked up my off-road camper trailer to the big dog and hit the road to adventure.

Here's the thing though...200 kilometres from home, on a bitumen road still [fortunately] I felt a shudder, checked the side-view mirror and saw plumes of white smoke trailing behind me. Hmm, that's peculiar, I thought for a split second, until I realised what had happened.

I was hurtling along at 120kp/h but got it all slowed up pulling to a stop on the side of the road. I knew what I was going to see so waited in the car for a moment or two just to calm down a little, a few deep btreaths, and then...

Total and catastophic failure

That's the right side tyre on my camper trailer...Hmm, there's no air in there. In fact, it's not even a tyre anymore really. I stood there thinking that the universe hates me and therefore I'm receiving karma for all those bad things I've done...But I guess in truth it was just a destroyed tyre. I wasn't well pleased though and let the universe know.

I surveyed the tyre and looked for damage to the trailer itself and there was none. That's when I got to work making the change, putting the spare on.

I'm a bit of an old-school guy and so I know how to change tyres, have all the right equipment and am capable of getting the job done efficiently. I don't get it when people admit they don't know how and drive cars anyway. Seems very weird [let's call it irresponsible] to me. Anyway, I began to put the spare on.

I will own up to some grumbling [read: swearing and cursing] about the tyre itself and the time I was losing. I had a long drive and needed to get to camp to set up prior to sundown. I was also counting the cost of having to replace the tyre. That's $450AUD folks as it's a big old mud terrain tyre and super costly. All because the air that was supposed to be inside the tyre decided it wanted to be outside the tyre!

I'm still trying to work out how the air escaped but I think it was a faulty valve. Has the air vacated the tyre all at once or slowly? I don't know, but once it got down to a low enough pressure the speed of the wheel simply tore the sidewall out of the tyre as the tread was lagging on the road due to being low-pressured or flat. At 120kp/h there's not a lot of time between a good tyre and bad tyre when the air exits the confines of it.

What was cool was that a couple people stopped to see if I needed help. Of course I'm always wary of that as one never knows if a person's ulterior motive is to steal my travel snacks but it was all good, just good folk trying to lend a hand. I had it covered so thanked them and sent them on their way - No travel snacks were lost.

Before long, 90 minutes actually as I had some shenanigans getting the spare off the trailer where it's stored, I was on my way again and heading to my camping spot. On the way I was thinking about what could have happened. Sometimes in these situations vehicles can be so affected that they are thrown off course which, with oncoming traffic, would have been bad. The trailer could skew over the road and flip over or hit another vehicle. There's loads of scenarios. I was lucky I guess, this time.

I also tried to get my head around the fact I'm going to have a miss-matched tyre which doesn't work at all well for my OCD nature. I have thought about it though and will end up putting the brand new replacement on the left side of the trailer using the used tyre I take off as the spare. Smart huh? The set on there only has about 5,000 kilometres on them. Bloody brand new! Anyway, breath G-dog, breathe.

I'm now rolling without a spare which isn't so good but I hope to sort that out on Monday - It'll depend if they have the tyre up here or not. If not I'll have to deal with it. The trailer is set up as my accommodation now anyway so won't move again until I head home.

I'm a little annoyed still, I mean the cost and time I lost but it could have been much worse. I also put some thought into preparing for this sort of thing but realistically there isn't much I can do. I keep a compressor on-board and check my vehicle tyres every single week - The camper trailer was checked the night before I left; What more can I do?

Anyway, I didn't crash and burn in a fiery-fuel-fed-wreck of mangled steel, plastic and rubber...I'm all good and will live to eat more travel snacks on the way home. So whilst it wasn't a fairytale journey it'll all end well regardless.

Right now I better get back to enjoying my camping weekend but now it's your turn; I want to hear your travel stories when things didn't go right. Had a flat, breakdown, got lost, left something home that you needed, forgot to get travel snacks? Come on y'all, tell me about your road-trip travel stories!

Track: Where the blacktop ends