The T.A.H.N.G.V.B.D.

June 15-16

Friday Sucked Ass:

We had an innocent enough objective: drive out to take a look at the Lime Creek run.    It was described in our book as a steep and exciting class 5 run.    Now, we were sure there wasn’t going to be much water, but we still thought it would be a nice hike to look at Adrenaline Rapid.  There was not a hint, a whiff, an inkling of the terrible road conditions on Lime Creek Road.   Sigh.  

We saw the sign that said “Rough Road: 12 miles”.     But we’ve seen those signs before and they’ve just been to advise bigger potholes or the hated washboard striping.   Those can be annoying, but survivable.    This road…this road was hell on earth.   It was like driving on shards of glass with soccer sized rocks placed strategically for maximum pain.  We could only go about 1 mile per hour.   We were having a tough time negotiating all the big rocks because of those stupid low-hanging sway bars.   After an hour or so, we came to a seemingly impassible spot around the halfway mark.   Newly fallen boulders created a narrow slot that made you come within centimeters of the cliff edge.    Clearly other vehicles had been passing by, but our truck was just too big.  We lined up and barely got the front tires between the rocks, and then we had no room to move to clear the back tires.   Missy had clearly had enough, saying “I can’t go back”.  (At that point, we were still holding out hope that the road got better “just ahead”, which is why we never turned around).   The passenger rear tire had to come up and over a sharp wedge point.   I held my breath…and it turned out okay!   I got some pictures, but I don’t think you can appreciate the horrible sharp rock, nor how close we came to the edge.

At this point, we were both mentally drained from the tense ride.   We agreed we were giving up on seeing the run: we just wanted to get out of that minefield.    As we were slowly making our way up the road, we heard it.  POP…HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.   I can’t even summon the energy right now to describe how totally and completely horrifying the feeling was that we were going to have to deal with yet another ruined tire.   We limped forward to a rare shoulder area and started to deal with the flat.   Missy was pretty chill with the whole ordeal.  I was on the edge of tears, so if she hadn’t have held it together so competently, I’m sure we would have Thelma and Louise’d it right then.  I mean, COME ON!   A brand new set of 4 tires purchased when we got this used truck.   And this newly ruined tire represents the 4th and final ruined tire of the set.   I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have a tire last its normal lifespan.   It must be magical.

Changing the tire was painful.   We didn’t know where to put the jack.  I had no reception, so I couldn’t call for help.   We had 2 jacks, and we must have tried 6 or 7  placements.  We just couldn’t get the truck high enough to clear the tire.   Finally we got a big rock, and jerry-rigged a set up to raise the jack.   I’m sure it wasn’t at all safe.   We’d been there about an hour and hadn’t seen a soul.   Just as we got the jack working properly, then 2 sets of hikers and 2 jeeps passed by.   Why couldn’t they have shown up at the beginning?    Anyway, we got the flat tire off.  Then we tried to put the spare on.   Sigh.   Those of you who’ve changed your own tires before probably already knew this, but you need MORE clearance to get an inflated tire on then you need to get the deflated tire off.    Lesson learned the hard way.    We were at the end of the jack…it would not go up more.    I tried getting a big rock and digging a hole, but the dirt was hard packed and it wasn’t working.   So…we lowered the jack again and inserted something else beneath it.  Finally got the needed 2 extra inches and got the spare tire on.    We were dirty and tired and depressed…and we still had 5 more miles of this horrid road to go.    It was even worse agony from this point on, because we were sure that each rock that was unavoidable was going to puncture another tire.   But we made it out at last.

We drove straight to the repair shop (the one that did our rotors/brakes…which work AWESOME!) and went in to buy our 4^th tire of this trip.   Big surprise, they didn’t have our tire in stock.   Worse, their warehouse didn’t have any in stock either.    We went outside to look at our atlas to see about going to a bigger city while the technician made a call to see how expensive it would be to UPS our tire.    Finally, a bit of luck…there was an established freight run between Denver and SLC, so to drop off a tire would just be $3.50.    We went ahead and ordered the tire.   The issue is, it won’t be here until Wednesday.   We only get 14 days in the National Forest campground area, and that time is up on Sunday.    We figure we’ll ask the ranger for an exception to stay until Wed.   There’s such light traffic on Mon/Tues/Wed that we hope he’ll agree.   If not, we’ll have to move to one of the private pay campgrounds in the city.

Saturday –

Today was a recovery day for us.   We went for bike rides in the morning.  After lunch, we went to town to go to the library.   We stayed at the library until closing time, and then headed back to camp.    I wanted to have a campfire, because it was a calm night and the upcoming days are supposed to be windy.   But, since our across-the-creek neighbors were blaring their radio, Missy didn’t want to.   So I went ahead and had a campfire for one.   It was annoying to hear the radio, but otherwise it was a relaxing and peaceful way to recover from the previous day’s stresses.