travel day one

 Part of our group lives in a traffic-heavy area so when we discussed times to leave, they said leaving before 9a does not decrease the arrival time, it just increases the amount of time in stop-and-go.  So we planned to leave at 9a and managed to actually leave at 9:13 and 9:16, respectively.  We had planned to take the Richmond bypass because it has a lot less merging traffic and less bridge joints to jolt the trucks and trailers than taking i95 directly through Richmond.  From there we would stop at Rivers Bend Grill in Chesterfield, VA because we'd get there around noon, and it is easily accessible from the bypass.  Early that morning one of our group realized Rivers Bend is closed on Mondays, so we had to pick something else.  I found that Central Park Deli shares a parking lot with Kroger (grocery stores are likely to have lots of empty spaces which allows for space for parking the rigs), and it got pretty good reviews.  What I didn't realize was that the Deli is actually next to i95, not the bypass, so we ended up going through the city anyway.  They seemed to have only one waitress serving the entire restaurant and even though she was running her ass off, service was slow because it was just too much for one person.  They had two people busing tables and only one server.  Probably they had scheduled more servers.  The food was adequate, but I would not go out of my way to eat there again.  

As we pulled into the parking lot at lunch time, the power steering started to go in and out on our truck.  The consensus was to buy a turkey baster at the Kroger and some water bottles and then drive a couple blocks to the Pilot gas station to buy some replacement power steering fluid.  We emptied the water bottles and filled them with the burnt power steering fluid that we extracted with a turkey baster.  Once the new power steering fluid was in, the power steering never gave us any more trouble.

 At around 2:30 my husband was looking in the sideview mirror and saw one of the trailer tires go. He was able to get the rig onto the shoulder to inspect the damage and two other vehicles not in our group also pulled over.  Turns out the entire tread from one of the rear tire trailers came off and as it was spinning partially attached to the tire, the tread smashed up one of the plastic fenders, knocked the second completely off, put black marks on the boat, and pulled the trailer tail light loose.  Debris from the tread and the fender had hit the two other vehicles who pulled over, but fortunately no one was hurt and there was no damage to the other cars.  

As we were inspecting all the vehicles on the side of i95 traffic was speeding by at 70+ miles per hour and making us all nervous.  The nearest exit was 5 miles to the south, but the damaged tire was holding air, so we drove about 15 mph up the shoulder for the 5 miles so we could get to a safer place to evaluate our options.  The tread on the other rear trailer tire was showing signs of being about to go and the spare tires was the same age as the two rear tires, so we started calling local service centers to see if we could find some replacement tires.  I think Mike's Auto and Truck Repair in Jarratt, VA was the 1st place we called, and they had the 3 tires in stock and said they would be there in 20 minutes.