Day Trip Day Four: A Report From the Field

Today we entered, but did not quite leave (Youngstown), Ohio. Much of the time was spent on more rural detours that, in theory, should be clear of obstructions for a wide 'n' high load, but not everyone is keeping their trees inboard nor do they refrain from enthusiastic flags displayed from light poles, putting their patriotic manifestations well into the lane and below our gunwales. Still, despite the slow, careful progress, at least it isn't boring, knock your teeth out, rutted highway. On a more amusing route, they took us around a construction zone smack into the local county fair where we spent some VERY slow time behind a horse drawn buggy! We have yet again found something on the road slower than us.

The sky was in a foul mood all day with low overcast and spitting rain, though nothing that completely shut us down. What did shut us down was a nail in one of the trailer tires. We must of picked it up yesterday because I noticed the tire was a bit low this morning and filled it up, but it was low again at our noon check. In an amazing team effort with the boys in the field together with Cath at home base, we swapped in the spare tire and did an almost rolling puncture repair at a tire shop Cath located a bit further down the interstate; down time less than 45 minutes total. Yea!

We finally figured out the Flying J point/shower thing. Basically, $100 of fuel gets you enough points for one shower, but we only just figured out how to start getting points. So we have 1/2 a shower coming today. Personally, I'm giving it to Spencer's left side: stinks the most. The pumps have a crazy complicated menu system where you enter your DOT number (we make 'em up as we go), unit number (no idea what that is, but it doesn't seem to matter) and then half the time our card doesn't work and Spencer has to run inside with the credit card.

The next couple of days do not look ideal. The weather promises to be nasty for the remaining duration, so it depends on how hard it decides to rain as to how much progress we can make. New York won't let us in the state on a Sunday (I didn't think they could smell us from so far away...) so we need a place to stay on the PA side, which means Scranton. If the weather behaves, it looks like about 310 miles tomorrow and then 250 into Mystic on Monday, but who knows what surprises the miles ahead have for us!