So I made it to Las Vegas before I had to fill up for gas and while there I finally took a look at this little bubble I was told about 700 plus miles ago by the oil change person. I don’t know why it took me so long to remember about it, but it did. Once I saw it I was surprised I wasn’t on the side of the road with a blowout. I immediately looked up a Firestone (where I take care of all stuff tire related) and found one less than two miles away, on Durango Drive.

I knew they couldn’t fix the tire so I prepared myself mentally for the two new tire purchase ahead of me. I got some less than exciting news when I found out I was almost at the mandated replacement tread all the way around. I thought they were looking a bit close to the end of life, but I thought I could at least get this sabbatical out of them. I had them entertain me with the least expensive option to replace all four and also had them run a pro-rate on the same tires I had now. Turns out that replacing all four was only about 30 percent more expensive with the lower mileage tire than two tires at the higher mileage equivalent. So it decided that safety, efficiency, and overall savings won.

I headed into the city to figure out my next move. I needed a little break from the road in order to reorganize. I am choosing to basically live out of my car for this adventure and overall I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I can go so many places, although I haven’t found a parking garage in Old Vegas where my car would clear the maximum height requirement with the luggage topper on it. I would say the car is averaging around 35 miles to the gallon, maybe more overall. I am getting a good deal of sleep and a great amount of exercise most days. I am not starving by any means. There have been some downsides though.

Sometimes it is difficult to find a spot to call “home” for the night. This could be lack of available places along the route I chose to travel, poor planning on how long I would be visiting an area which puts me in after dark, or the info I gathered about the spot was just plain wrong. Also, nights are colder than I anticipated so staying outside the car to type up a blog or work on the gallery at that appointed time is nearly impossible, especially if I am at a spot with not electricity available. I can only charge my devices while the car is moving as I don’t want to be left without juice in the morning when it is time to go. I haven’t tried to charge the laptop outside of rest areas and the like as I am not sure the invertor will handle it. I will look into that. I have managed work-arounds, but that is very time consuming.

Since I lost a good portion of my day to the tire change, although they were surprisingly quick as I was out in about 3 hours as a walk-in, I decided to get a hotel room so I could reevaluate my route. I had begun some research earlier in the day and found out where I was headed had quite a few road closures so I needed to find a more southern route with places to stay along the way. I needed to be able to work for a good deal of time without worrying about running out of battery, daylight, or the cold setting in. I was able to get a lot done at this point and got out to do some donating, so I say that was a good move.

The last point I would like to make is that while I am doing this voluntarily, many people in the world are living out of their cars as necessity. While I have no data, I have heard of more than one NVCC student completing their degrees under such conditions. The everyday things do take longer, finding a place to park your car to get solid rest to be able to perform the next day is a job in itself, and having a warm meal that is healthy and a decent price is difficult to say the least and having one daily is just not a reality. There has to be a better way to advertise to those in this situation ways to get help or services available to them.