Day T-7 (June 16th) or Quest for Tire…
It’s only six days until Shar and I will leave for a road trip like no other and head south. Six days and it’s already been an adventure.
Unlike our Boston or Bust road trip, this one doesn’t have just one destination. In fact, a better way of summing up this journey would be to say that Shar and I will be playing a nationwide game of Connect the Dots. The game starts on June 23rd with the first dot being Salem, Oregon, the second dot is Cesar E Chavez National Monument outside of Bakersfield, California… The 95th dot is likely to be the Alford Desert and Fields, Oregon.
Shar is working hard on your administration license this year, so the planning fell to me to complete. Luckily, I did a lot of high school substituting this year and that afforded me plenty of time to research our trip. So I sat down, worked my way through the National Park Service’s website and wrote an Itinerary. Then revised it, and revised it, and revised it. It’s basically a travel guide at this point, weighing in at 38 pages. How this will match reality will be part of the experience over the next six week or so.
Here’s the link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jhoK8guNTVqEt88EVMF6-Ck7jkVkEXPQthZNxvmCbKQ/edit?usp=sharing
Why Maine, why all those places, and why this summer?
First off, Shar bought a new vehicle, a 2022 Jeep Renegade Limited named Austin. He’s very handsome and has so many bells and whistles. We have already tested out the camping in him, and it’s actually more comfortable than Alfie had been. Austin is a little longer, allowing us to completely close the back hatch against the possibility of rain. He’s a little wider too, giving us a little more elbow room on the twin mattress and a little more storage space. We have a vehicle we can trust to make the trip.
Secondly one of my best friends, Chun, has bought a place near Lincoln, Maine. On top of all that the rest of my high school buddies will gathering there for the week of July 17th.
Thirdly, visiting every national park is on our bucket list.
Lastly, our future summers might not have the time to do such a massive road trip, so we’re going to strike while the iron is hot.
Now you know some of the whys, whats and hows… Now to explain the subtitle of this first blog post “Quest for Tire” It’s a bad pun for those who may get the reference.
It’s been awhile since I bought a new vehicle, even longer for Shar. So after purchasing Austin we spent some time exploring all the parts, features, etc. For example, Jeeps have an Easter egg feature using their logo and we had fun trying to find them all.
We were sitting in a parking lot when I first looked for the spare tire. I found the compartment easily enough. It had a foam storage divider with some of the things you would expect to see: couple of orange cones, a small air compressor, oil funnel, Shar’s jumper cables. I even thought it was nice of Jeep to include a can of fix a flat. So, I undid a bolt, pulled out the storage divider and found… nothing. I had expected to see another compartment with a donut spare tire in it, but nothing.
So we got on Google and found out that vehicles don’t come with spare tires anymore, most of them at least. Shar is covered with roadside assistance for five years, and that will work great in Salem or any of the other populated areas we’ll be going through.
Not so much in the middle of the nowheres that we prefer to camp, and the desert south is the very definition of middle of nowhere.
Utah has quite a bit of nowhere as well. We will be spending quite a bit of time in Utah the end of July/beginning of August.
We will need a spare tire, period. First, I looked at Ebay and they have sets for $350 that include donut spare, jack, and lug wrench. Buying something like this sight unseen made me nervous, so I had Shar call the dealership.
She was told that Jeep doesn’t sell spares. They do sell tires, but at ridiculous prices. However, the parts tech was very friendly and had no problem suggesting going somewhere else with the specs he had printed to find the rim and tire that work work for Austin.
Spending more money than we need to doesn’t work for us, so Shar made an appointment at Les Schwab for today, June 16th. I figured this would be a sure solution. I was confident I would be in and out in an hour, probably less, with a full sized spare. We might pay a little more than the Ebay price, but that would be ok for the peace of mind knowing it was the correct spare.
Spoiler Alert: Appointment was at 8:30 and it’s 12:30 now.
Schwab didn’t have anything that would work. They had a rim at a sister store, but it turned out to rub the caliper (part of the breaks) so that wasn’t going to work.
So Sergio, the tech that was working with me, said to try B & R Wrecking and I gave them call. They are a northwest pick a part business, and they managed to find something that would fit Austin, but it was in Albany. So I went back into Schwab to to double check if it would work, but forgot to write down enough information from B & R. When I called them back, you get sent to a central switchboard, I was stuck on hold for over 15 minutes before I just gave up. I asked Sergio and he confirmed that long as the bolt pattern lined up we’ed be set.
Luckily, Albany is just a short hop down I-5 from Salem, but Austin’s Nav system, which has never liked me for some reason, sent me to an RV park on the wrong side of the fence from B & R. So I circled all the way back to Santiam Highway, found the correct street, and then the B & R office. A brand new employee was learning the ropes, so it took a little longer, but out he walked with a rim that was almost identical to the ones on Austin. I was halfway there. We paid the $200 and off to Schwab I went for some rubber.
Which gets our story back to the 12:30 part. It would be another 15 minutes or so before we paid another $246 for the tire and a lug wrench that will fit Austin. It was a bit more work than I had expected, but we have a full sized spare that we can count on. It fits great in the spare tire space. All the extra stuff from the foam storage container fits nicely under the tire, leaving plenty of room for food, books, and a comforter we probably aren’t going to need in 95+ degree weather.
The Quest for Tire had ended successfully and I still had enough time to hit the BLM regional office in south Salem. I pick up my Military National Park pass that allows veterans free entry to all national parks and monuments. Ryan, the ranger at the office, even suggested some great boon docking spots that might work west of Joshua Tree.
Next up T-6 Day, or Austin Goes Off Grid
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