Words

   Often on our journeys, Sandy and I play a road game called Words, an alternating, letter-choosing game where having a broad vocabulary is a boon, but so is the readiness of having the words spring to mind. 

  The word that popped to the forefront for yesterday's adventure was 'hubris'.  

   Our plan was to travel 21 miles of bad road to get to both a hiking area (Fossil Creek) and a hot spring (Verde Hot Springs). Prudently,  we called the local ranger station to check on both road conditions and river levels since we would have to ford the Verde River to get to the springs.  Imprudently,  we ignored the ranger's advice not to travel the road in a low-clearance vehicle,  thinking that if we encountered something we deemed impassable,  we would simply turn around. And her ominous warning that we needed to know how to change a tire didn't apply to us since we would be traveling at banana slug speed. 

  Hubris - in Greek tragedy- excessive pride leading to defiance of the gods, usually (as happened yesterday) leading to the gods handing the heroes their heads on a platter with a side dish of fries and a shaker of salt to rub into any open wounds. 

   After 45 minutes of driving,  we had managed to put 12 miles of bad road behind us and were feeling a bit cocky until an odd sound, a flapping or thwapping, issued from the right front of the rig. Of course!  The ranger's curse!  A flat tire!

  We had the tires checked and inflated before leaving Medford,  but had failed to ask them to check the spare hanging beneath the rig. I had visually and tactilely inspected it when we bought Cora last month,  but hadn't taken it down and off until yesterday,  12 miles up a bad road. Hubris. 

   The spare looked like it wouldn't last a mile. No cell service. The proposition of leaving Cora behind while we masked up and tried to hitch a ride  both directions with a large tire was both daunting and undesirable. 

   So much for the gods. This is the time of the goddess. Sandy to the rescue. She suggested that

we take one of the good tires from the dually rear axle, put it on the front and run the spare on the rear in its place, thereby taking weight off of the spare. 

  And that's exactly what we did, and how we survived the challenge, although on the way back down, we discovered that none of the 6 or 8 tire shops in the valley had the correct tire in stock, and we would have to wait until today to have a couple of them shipped up from Phoenix. 

   The fries are tasty, though a bit salty for my taste.