Texas Trip '07 Days 15, 16, & 17

15. Nobody fishing anywhere last night or this morning so we took off to get the trailer tire fixed and try fishing at Bastrop Bayou. Bastrop was a big-flop, couldn't evan catch a crab there. The tire shop we were directed to was just that, a tire shop. A large older tin building painted bright red with signs all over the place and they do a big business in used tires. Two white guys were unloading a large bob truck full of them and stacking them by size and general type. A young black guy, early 20s, was inside mounting used tires on rims, dunking them in a leak tank, stacking, and marking them on the treads with indntifiction numbers. He was wearing what used to be a white T-shirt that came nearly to his knees and so dirty it was black and slick all over the front. He was dirty and wrestled dirty wet old tires all day but he wasn't stupid. He said he'd fix my tire when he finished the one on the mounting machine and rolled mine inside. He effectivley had possession of my wheel and tire so I wasn't going to leave. Then another guy drove up with a minor problem and the kid jacked up one wheel, finished the mount, plugged my tire, then went back to the pickup on his jack. I'll bet not many customers ever leave there before he can get to them.

We went back to the park, I put the tire on the trailer, loaded the Saab, and put all the fishing gear in it.

16. Unhooked, checked everything out and took off for home driving up the beach road through Galveston to the free ferry landing. The ferry took us to Port Bolivar And we drove up to High Island and over to Winnie, TX to get on I-10 go Beaumont. They were still cleaning up debris from Hurricane Humberto that landed at High Island about 9 days before. About Winnie we started hearing a thumping that sounded like a loose shock absorber bolt and Doris was running around listening all over the coach for it. I told her, "You're sitting on it. It's right under your seat." When I stopped and looked the top mount bolt of the right front shock absorber had broken. The top of the shock way lying against the back wall of the wheel well, couldn't go anywhere, couldn't hurt anything so I took off up the road. I got tired of listening to it in about 50 miles and pulled into a tire shop. They charged $5.00 to zip out the bottom bolt with an impact wrench and I stuck the shock in a storage compartment and set sail for home. The Travco has a beam front axle and leaf springs and I couldn't tell any difference in the way she drove after the bolt broke so saved time and money by just taking it off. I had the tools to do the job but didn't feel like wallowing around on hot concrete next to a hot 4" pipe doing the job myself.

On up in Marshal, TX I was on a slight down grade to a traffic signal with cameras and it went yellow. Normallly I would have had plenty of time to stop but when I stepped on the brake the pedal went an inch or two lower and the pedal effort was enormous. I backed off and cut the light super short, saw it go red before we got past it. I half expect to get my picture sent to me along with a ticket for running the light. I didn't say a thing about the brakes to Doris, just cut myself more slack in traffic and started braking about twice as far back as usual when I had to stop. The Travco has two Hydrovac brake boosters and I didn't have any boost at all. That's when I realized that only one Hydrovac had been working the whole time I've owned the Travco. I always thought the pedal effort was a little high but have driven overloaded trucks that weren't any worse and didn't think much about it. We made it to Malvern, AK, about 25 miles out of Little Rock that evening and squated on a Wal-Mart lot that night.

17. Checked everything out and blasted off for home. I was really surprised at teh good condition of I-30 and I-40 across Arkansas, there was only about 50 miles of bad road in two segments near Little rock. The run across there and up I-55 to home was a milk run and we picked up our only tail wind of the whole trip the 150 miles on I-55.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about our trip and I didn't bore you to death with it.

A week later at home: I pulled the brake boosters off the Travco to send in and get rebuilt. The front one dumped about 2 quarts of brake fluid and it should hold only about 3 ounces. That proved to me that it had never worked because that fluid was in the working side of the vacuum chamber the whole time and I never had to add any brake fluid the three years I've been driving it. When they are back on that will finish up the rebuild of the entire brake system.

Thanks for sharing John. I've really enjoyed reading it.

Now I don't need to go on vacation. I've lived vicariously through you! :)

John

I enjoyed your vacation very much. Where are we going next? Would like to see more pictures.

The next Travco trip may be back to San Luis Pass in March when the Flounder are running, that's sort of in the cards right now. I don't want to get hung up on one place and need a Desert Southwest "fix" before long. The Gitmo Guys Blowout is the last week of this month and as soon as I get back from that we're going out to Ogden, UT to see our latest grandkid who's due in abut a week from now. All of our grandkids have been taken by cesarian which is OK except for one problem later on. When they want to go out and play they always go out the window instead of the door. I'll see if I can search out an old post about a Gitmo Guys reunion and paste it on here. It's in Nashville, TN again this year.

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