25 thousand miles without a flat...

About two weeks ago, while visiting family in California, someone asked:

"How many miles so far in your trip?"
-25K
"How many flats have you had so far?"
- None!
"That is incredible !!"
- I guess, we have been very careful and lucky

And it seems like that is all it takes...brag about care and luck to get your first flat!!
But there is bad luck, and not so bad luck. I think this time we got away with the not so bad type.

While in the Bay Area, I noticed that one of the trailer tires on the right side was a bit low. I checked its pressure, and sure enough it was 20 psi under its normal pressure.
I kept checking on it for the next days, and it looked OK.

Then, a couple of weeks after that, while in Yosemite National Park, I checked again, but this time I did not had to check the pressure, as when I got closer to the tire a big-fat-shiny-phillips screw head inserted in the tire was staring at me right in the face.

Sure enough, after closer inspection, that was the source of the very slow leak.
But not only that, the head of the screw looked so filled down that I suspect that has been in the tire for quite a while!

I figured that the best thing to do was to put the spare tire on the trailer and take the, literally screwed, tire to the nearest tire repair shop 20 miles away.

This very simple plan got thwarted when I tried to loosen the wheel lug-nuts...they were bolted so tight that my cross-bar was bending (using a cheater extension pipe!)

So...knowing that the dang screw has been holding so well for weeks now, we drove the whole thing to the tire shop. And while in there, we asked to have all the wheels' lug-nuts loosen and re-torqued at a sane rate.

Lesson:

a) Do not brag about not having flats
b) Make sure that you can loosen your wheel lug-nuts before starting your trip.