Tucson, heading East

Hi our dear friends

I was not sure how to title this one, but it works.

Actually we started east from Yuma, AZ, but lets not quible.

I was very proud of myself for making the new bolt for the jacks, but I knew it would not last. I am way too forgetful. When we left the BLM land west of Tucson, I forgot to remove the bolt.
So,by the time we got to the resort it showed up missing, lost somewhere down the highway.
So now what!

I crawled under the rv and tried to remove the pin holding the coupler that held the new bolt, but, alas, with no luck. After much knashing of teeth, and hmmmmm what am I going to do now, I took down the rear jacks and put them on the tailgate of the truck. I removed the pins holding the coupler, went to Ace hardware and bought a new bolt and new pins and put it back together.

While doing that I had to drill a new hole in the coupling and new bolt with an 1/8 bit. I was pressing way to hard and broke the bit, and that little bit of the bit that was left went into my left index finger!!!

Ouch!!! I yelled out and Linda said are you all right!!

Hell no!!!!
I just put a hole in my finger, and it is bleeding like mad, and it hurts!!!! damn it!!!

After repairing my finger, I finished fixing the jacks and with Linda's help got them back in, and down....so now we are both happy, but my finger still hurts!!!! damn it!!!

Sunday morning I got up to make coffee like I have been doing for ten years. I have a carafe that I put water in, pour that into a pot to boil, and than put my plastic Melitta adaptor in the carafe and add the Melitta filter and coffee. I have done it a few thousand times.
When the water boils, I remove it from the stove and start pouring it into the filter.

Well...Because of my ouchie I must not have gotten in the right spot and as I was pouring the boiling water into the filter it started to fall over........natural reaction would be to catch it, but I missed and the boiling water went onto my left hand (with the ouchie) and the stove, counter top, cabinet doors, and the floor and I yelled like HELL!!!!

Linda, who was in bed yet, called out "are you all right"

Duhhhhhh

I burned my hand, spilled the coffee grounds all over.....hell no I am not all right!!!!!!

We got that cleaned ok and I make another pot of coffee with no problems, as I have a few thousand times.
That was number three (3)

Today we left Tucson, heading for Deming, NM.
We were about 40 miles south of Tucson and were cruising about 62-65mph. I was coming up on a semi and saw a truck in the left lane coming up to pass me, so I slowed down to let it pass and than pulled out behind it. About the time the front of our trailer was even with the cab of the semi, we saw something come off of the trailer in front of us. It hit the ground and threw a lot of sparks and bounced into the air about 4-5 foot above the ground!!!!!

Have you ever read about someones experience where they said it was like in slow motion......well baby, that is the way it happened.
This piece of metal was about 1 1/2-2 foot long and about 3 inches in diameter at the small end, and looked kind of like a trumpet. It hit the ground and bounced straight down the road...I saw it in the mirror bouncing again between us and the semi and than lost it....looking in my driver side mirror I saw it hit again on the inside shoulder and than hit the median with a big cloud of dust!!!!! I thought it may have hit the trailer, but could not stop as the semi was right next to me, but he was slowing down.

If it had bounced sideways a little bit, it would have come thru the windshield and possibly killed either Linda or I, or if it had missed us caused us to have a major accident with the semi.....in either case we would have both been ready to push up daisies.

The good Lord was on our side again today!!!

Luckily there was an exit about two miles down the road and we pulled off, and let our hearts return to normal.
Other than that, it was an uneventfull trip, as are most of them, except for the scenery.
I hope that we do not have one of these trips again, altho, I can say in over 30 years of travel this is the first major event that we have had.
Thank God, again.
Linda took pictures with our new little camera, so here are some of them