299…

I checked on the blog today and what was I greeted with?

The days left until we retire...299 days to go until we are FREE!

We finally broke through that 300 day barrier.  Now I recognize that 299 days is still a long time but I also recognize that this number represents the longest it will take since we are not dependent on a  specific date.  We are more dependent on other things such as whether or not we are ready to travel, what the weather is like where we are and where we intend to go to, what our daughter’s fast pitch schedule is like and where she will be playing.  So in actuality we are more realistically looking at anytime from mid-to late January to March 2nd for the retire date. So on the closest side it is about 255 days or so…. sounds better doesn’t it? ;)  Then we will be ready to be free as bird...

So in the meantime all we have to do is:

• have garage sale number 1
• put the house up for sale
• sell my truck
• have the house inspected and appraised
• have garage sale number 2 (optional – depends on #1 sale)
• sell the house
• buy a rig
• move into an apartment or the rig if we have one
• buy the toad (Honda CRV or a Jeep for now)
• modify the RV
• sell the Camry
• have our last garage sale
• get the heck out of dodge

So much to do…  so little time…

Things I have learned about tires…

Reading through the many blogs one becomes painfully aware of the fact that between you a good time is where the rubber meets the road… it is your TIRES! Tire blowouts are apparently no fun at all and can cause a tremendous amount of damage to the underside of your trailer or rig when they occur.  So what did I learn form reading all the blogs that talk about their experience with blowouts?

Three key things:

• Learn how to determine the age of your tires
• Install a Tire Monitoring System or develop a plan to always check tire pressure
• know what to do if you have a blowout before you have one

Why do I need to know the age of our tires? Well the older the tires are is one of the key factors that contributes to tires failing. Blog wisdom suggests that If your tires are more than seven years old they need to be replaced. So how do we know how old they are?  We need to know what the DOT number is on the tires (Easy to remember if you think DOT=date of tire :) DOT numbers are usually on the inside sidewalls so use a flashlight to find them. The last three to four digits of the DOT number tell us how old the tire is. If the DOT has three numbers they are older tires and the first two tell us the week of the year that the tire was made while the last number tells us the year it was made. Newer tires have four DOT numbers. Like before the first two numbers are the week it was made and the last two tell us the year. How useful is this! I was looking a a 2005 Winnebago Journey recently and was told the tires were less than two years old.  After looking at the DOT numbers on the tires and seeing 2104 I knew I was being told untruths too since the DOT number told me the tires were made on the 21st week of the year 2004.  This small untruth meant that I would need to spend two to three thousand dollars to replace tires on top of the price of the rig.  Also, it suggested there may be more untruths being told to me about this rig … needless to say I didn’t buy it.

Also, I plan to install a PressurePro Tire Monitoring System on my future home as well.  Again the blog wisdom suggests that no RV should be without a tire pressure monitoring system.  And from what I have read the PressurePro System is one of the best. It consists of a monitor and tire monitoring sensors.  The sensors screw onto the tire valve stems in place of the the valve caps. This allows us to always see the tire pressures before traveling and while traveling on the road we could be alerted when tires experience low pressure helping us avoid costly and dangerous tire blowouts. A must have in my opinion…

… and a last item about tires that is good to know is to better understand what to do if you experience a blowout…