What I learned from a vacant parking lot in OKC

I have a large family, and any of y’all who have large families will understand the predicament: it is hard to find a place to sleep for seven people, most of whom are children. It’s even harder to do with three dogs. So, we as a family have a choice to make, and there are basically three options:

1. Don’t travel

2. Airbnb

3. RV

We are a very outdoor-oriented family, and as a veteran, I get 50% off all federal campgrounds, making them extremely cheap (like, $9 or $10 a night with full hookups), so an RV was the obvious choice.

The first RV

We’re actually on our second RV trailer now. Our older one is getting a little long in the tooth, so we updated our digs last December. We bought the OG back in 2020, in the middle of the dumbest time of our shared memory. Thankfully, the rural campgrounds were still sane, although the federal campgrounds did shut off the sinks to “slow the spread.” Thanks, geniuses; how am I supposed to wash my hands?

Anyway, we bought it and kicked off camping with a bang, traveling to beautiful Beaver Lake in Arkansas, and then on the same trip, we cruised over to the Tulsa area to check out Oologah Lake (beautiful lake, VERY colorful crowd 😆).

Fast-forward a few months. We have close friends (our former pastor who married Kelz and me) who live near Lake Texoma, an extension of the Red River on the Oklahoma-Texas border. It is a beautiful lake, and we have been there thrice and love it more every time.

The drive down started out rough: I am a habitual checker and usually pull over every 50 miles or so to check tires, lights, safety chains, etc. Good thing I did because the whole belly of the trailer had started to pull away from the frame. Thankfully, I’m also an over-preparer, so a handful of tie-down straps later (and a couple of hours of my time), and we were on our way. The rest of the drive down was uneventful. The return leg was another story…

What happens in OKC stays in OKC

About an hour into our drive home, the kids needed to pee. There was a sign for a Braum’s (a Midwest delicacy), so we pulled off there. I did my usual walkaround inspection and noticed several steel cords from the belt sticking through the tread on one of the trailer tires.

I went ahead and put the spare on to be safe, figuring the one with the broken belt would suffice for a spare for a few miles if it came down to it.

About an hour later, we were just passing through Moore and into OKC when a pickup came flying up beside us, blaring its horn. The passengers screamed at us “YOUR TIRE IS GONE!” Mind you, I am on I-35 heading into a large city, which is not a great place for this to happen.

We pulled off onto the shoulder, and I expected to see a blowout. Nothing new there; it happens to crappy Chinese trailer tires all the time. But that wasn’t the case. The whole tire and wheel assembly was GONE, and the lugs were sheared completely off.

Long story short, we waited for two hours on a tow truck just for the driver to say he couldn’t help. He did follow us with his lights on long enough for us to limp into an abandoned parking lot. Awesome.

It was a very long and unpleasant night. It got down to about 35° overnight, but we didn’t run the heater because we didn’t want to run our generator, because we wanted to make sure to hear what was going on outside.

The next morning, I drove around for about an hour trying to find parts. Thank God for Norther Tool; it turns out there was one about 10 minutes from our location, and they had the whole replacement hub assembly and a tire & wheel combo. It only took me about 30-40 minutes to take off the old hub and install a new one, and then we were on our way home.

The rest of the drive home was a non-event, Thank God.

Learning self-reliance

Life throws some crazy curveballs at you, and this was one of them. RVing is easy to glamorize, but it is dicey pulling that big trailer sometimes! Especially what SHTF.

The point is not to be more prepared for a tire flying off your trailer in a major metropolitan (although you really should think about this if you ever try RVing).

The point is to make yourself a sturdier fellow for when life punches you in the dick. It’s going to happen, especially if you decide to take the lonely road of entrepreneurship. It’s hard! But the crazy thing is how much more resilient you’re going to be when you come out on the other side. I hated my worst clients; they made my life miserable. But they taught me what to look for to avoid their ilk in the future.

So, as much as it seems like the right thing to do, don’t stop putting yourself into uncomfortable positions; those are where you’ll find the greatest growth. Avoiding them isn’t sensible. Avoiding these potentially difficult things is just the comfortable option.

Oh, and RVing is still awesome, and you should totally do it 😉