Thursday, Oct. 1

After saying good-bye to Natasha and Daniel, I set out for a nearby Kragen Auto Parts to get a new bulb for one of my interior lights (no, not the circular one!) that had burned out. Since I was heading for an "auto parts" store, it reminded me that I had not checked my tire pressures in a while. I have a nifty wireless tire pressure system with a sensor mounted on the valve stem of each tire. Only I have to actually turn it on to check the pressures and I don't do it as often as I should. Today 3 of the tires read close to 55 psi, which is what they should be, but the 4th one read 14 psi, no matter how many times I checked it. When I got to the Kragen store, I went and took a look at it. It was definitely flat --- and I have no idea if it just happened last night or if I've been driving on it like that for a week! After getting my light bulb, I drove to the nearest gas station and filled the tire with air. When I was reinstalling the sensor thingy, which requires a valve stem extender on my Roadtrek, I could hear the air rushing out as soon as I put the extender on. Without the extender, no leak. This gave me hope that all I needed was a new extender and NOT a new tire. I then drove a few miles to a tire store and asked them to check out the tire and the extender. They agreed that the extender was bad and that was probably my problem (they didn't really examine the tire, unfortunately). The extenders they had didn't fit so I wound up having them put on a 1/2 inch extender that I had and they were able to get the sensor back on with that. It seemed to be holding the air okay but I was a good girl the rest of the day and checked the pressure every few hours.

I drove 3 or 4 hours until I got to Coalinga, CA, where I planned to (and did!) spend the night. The picture above is one of several open bed trucks I passed this day full of tomatoes. What I want to know is, what keeps the ones on the bottom from getting squished? There do not appear to be any boxes---just a whole truck bed full of tomatoes.

I worked on my blog several hours tonight but am still almost a week behind.