Cops and Tyres
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2010
1
229
366
Trip End
Jul 13, 2012
Plymouth, North Carolina
Monday, September 26, 2011
As the weather
seemed to be brightening, we headed off towards Cape Hatteras National Seashore, (or what was left of it). On the way, we noticed that although the vibration had gone, the sway was still there but not as exaggerated. We will have to get it checked out later. We arrived at the seashore around 1pm and after checking with the Visitor Centre where we were allowed to go, we headed north to Currituck Beach Lighthouse. Here we had lunch and just took some photos and had a look around the Outer Banks Centre for Wildlife Education, which had a small aquarium of fish and a decoy exhibit. We then headed south to the Wright Brothers National Memorial which is where they took their first flight. We continued south until Bodie Island Lighthouse and then had to turn around as this was as far as we could get before Hurricane Irene's new inlet. We headed off Cape Hatteras and onto the mainland, passing over Roanoke Island, which is where America's first English child was born in 1587 and continued on Route 64 to find somewhere to have dinner and park up for the night. As we were driving, we began to notice another vibration. This time it shook the whole van and it seemed to be getting worse. After pulling up and checking the tyres, we notice that the spare we had put on to replace the bad tyre had cracks on the inside. Great! That's now two new tyres needed and we still don't know what is causing the sway & vibration. We managed to slowly drive to a rest area and pull in to have dinner and decide what to do. After having some dinner we decided that we'd stay the night in the rest area, (even though we weren't supposed to) and hope we weren't woken in the middle of the night. As luck would have it a State Trooper drove in and Cat went over to let him know our situation. He was a very friendly chap called Pritchen, (I think he said it was a swedish name) and said we'd be ok and whilst they were chatting the local city police officer drove round and Pritchen put his siren on. On hearing this and not wanting Cat to have all the fun, I finished the washing up and joined in on the fun. The officers were sharing some banter and Pritchen was saying that we thought the city police were soft and were looking for a fight. Cat being Cat, joined in on the fun by stancing up and saying 'put 'em up' and we all had a good
laugh. After a bit more chatting, the police disappeared and we moved the van around to the back of the rest area out of the way and headed off to McDonalds to check email. This was after Pritchen had given us a warning not to be out too late and also offered to run us there and
back. Nice man! After checking email and enjoying a hot fudge sundae we headed back to the van and settle in for the night, watching two Hotel Babylon episodes and then to bed.
27th Sept.
Up at 7.30am and moved the van across the road to a garage that Pritchen, the StateTrooper, had recommended. We had checked last night that they openedat 8am, but when we got there, they were already open and working onanother vehicle. We explained our swaying and vibrating
problem andthe mechanic came and looked at our tyres and told us that the sparewas also bad. He then went and checked his used stock of tyres, but unfortunately, he didn't have our size, so we had to order new ones from a company just down the road. About a couple of hours later,over $200 out of pocket and we were on the road again, only to stop 2 minutes down the road at McDonalds to check email again. This done we headed off in search of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
