30.10.-07.11.2006: Yuma We spent the first three days this week at a campground, working on the computer to try and finally catch up with the website. We got visited by some "trick or treaters" on Halloween night. It was lucky that we had some sweets to give them! Kirsten even made home-made chips and stunk Winnie out. It took us ages to get rid of the frying fog that was created! We spent most of the day on Thursday, writing the website and studying for our driving test which we will take the next day. We spent Friday, driving miles to the nearest DMV centre to renew our driving licenses and taking a written test. When we got there, we were told that we couldn't renew our licenses because we had less than 2 months on our US visas! Why couldn't they have told us a few days ago when we went in to ask about renewing them and picking up the forms!! Well, there's not a lot we can do about it. We will be in Mexico when they expire and have to leave the US for 2 months in order to be allowed back into the country! A no win situation for us. Not a good day - even Burger King messed up our order! On Saturday we finished doing the shopping for Mexico and then headed East on the freeway intending to drive through Tucson and then head south to cross the border. We didn't get very far when there was a huge explosion. It was so loud our first thought was that our propane tank had exploded! (If that had happened, Winnie would have been flying through the air!) We were right at an exit and managed to pull over. Our inside rear drivers side tyre had blown. We got out the warning triangle and then Helen went walking down the exit to find a phone to contact Triple A. A police car then came and picked her up! The officer contacted Triple A for us and Helen got to ride as a "suspect" in the back of the cruiser! 45 minutes later help arrived but the man told us he wasn't allowed to change an inside tyre! It turned out that he couldn't do it anyway because our spare tyre has the wheel hub for a front tyre on it and so wouldn't fit. So he took off the blown tyre and we had to drive very carefully and slowly on three tyres on the back. Fortunately it was only 9 miles back to Yuma but our visas run out in three days, so we have to get at least one replacement before we go over the border. Not as easy as you think!!!! We managed to find a workshop open to change our spare tyre onto the rear hub but they didn't have the right equipment to help us. 2 hours later they had managed to break off the valve on the spare tyre and couldn't put it on anyway! So we limped over to another workshop on 3 back tyres and spent the night waiting for them to open so we could at least get the right amount of tyres on. If another tyre blew we would really be in the brown smelly stuff! We finally got the spare on (minus the valve!) and hunted for new tyres in vain. On Monday we found out that no one in Yuma had any of the type of tyres we need - not a single one!!! We would have to get them delivered from Phoenix which would take between 3-5 days. But we have to leave the US tomorrow! We ended up having to get the tyres on special delivery which cost extra and, because all our tyres are the same age, we decided to replace all of them at the same time. There would be no way we could get replacement tyres in Mexico if we're having this much trouble in the US! So we couldn't do much except hope that the tyres would get delivered tomorrow and hunted for a valve replacement for the spare - also not easy. It seems that we have problems with everything we do because we are Always a special case!!! It's either Winnie or us - nothing is simple! We bought a new frying pan and tested it out on sausages and eggs - it burned the skins off the sausages and managed to burn the bottom of the eggs without cooking the yolks!!!! So we took it back for a refund! We hunted for another one without luck so we'll have to make do with the one frying we have. Fortunately the new tyres arrived on Tuesday - we have until midnight to leave the US!!! We managed to get the new tyres fitted including new valves and got to the border by noon. The borders aren't equipped for Europeans or anyone else who has to get to the US side first. There is never anywhere to park because they expect people to just drive across the border. We had a few problems handing in our old US visas because no one expects it or really knows what to do with them! But finally we managed to get into Mexico with all 6 tyres and spent the rest of the day driving.