Isaac and Jenni Marshall: Desert Camping

A few weekends ago we set out with a group of friends for an overnight camping trip in the desert...

Ready to go!

We were only a few miles out of town when we heard a loud pop and then the repetitive thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud of a flat tire. Grrrr! Luckily we were just coming out of a large round-about when this happened, so there was a little gravel area we were able to pull off on. When we got out to investigate this is what we discovered...

A complete blowout!

So, we called the other cars, and they turned back around to come and help. Isaac and Dan unloaded all of our gear so we could get to our jack.

This looks like a good place for a BBQ!

Dubai has a serious lack of pull-out space along the roads, so we were barely off of the busy highway. Large trucks are not allowed to use Sheik Zayed road, the highway that runs through town, so they were all whizzing past us at ridiculously high speeds.

All the guys got together and began to work on changing the tire. The whole experience was one mishap after another and we are certain that we could write a manual on "How Not to Change a Tire."

Isaac assessing the situation

One group worked on removing the spare. Those bolts were on tight!!!

Even two guys couldn't get the last one! What was the deal?

Oh, yeah, it has a lock on it... hehehe=) Now the spare was ready to go.

Onto the next step... At first the jack wasn't tall enough to lift the car, so we found a brick to prop it up on. Unfortunately, the brick added too much height and the jack couldn't fit. So, the guys found a shovel and dug a pit underneath the car, in which to nestle the brick to give the jack its needed boost. Third time's the charm! Adam was the lucky man in charge of this job!

Once the car was propped up, the guys set about the task of removing the tire. Simple enough, right? Wrong! The bolts were screwed on tight, and after quite a long period of huffing and puffing, pushing and pulling, and twisting and turning, they had all been removed. Phew! Time to take the tire off... only, it wouldn't come off. It was stuck! Nothing held it to the car, yet the tire wouldn't budge. The guys tried setting the car to neutral, but left the parking break off, so when they pulled on the tire, the whole car started rolling backwards and fell off the jack with a giant THUD!

Fortunately, James' shoe was the only victim in this mishap. And being the great guy he is, James kept on working with one shoe... you can see his legs in the background. The silver lining to this episode was that the impact of the fall off the jack caused the tire to pop right off=).

I think Dan was getting a little bored... here he is riding the spare tire. He swears he was "testing" it.=)

There were several more bumps in the road, associated with the height of the jack, giving us additional opportunities to utilize our problem solving skills, but in the end we were victorious! This hour and a half delay could have been a real drag, but instead we had some great laughs, and made lemonade (as they say) out of our bitter situation. It even gave us a kind of warm, fuzzy feeling to see how our Dubai "family" all came together to help.

We stopped along the way at this grocery store to get firewood.
Apparently, we were not the only vehicular problem of the day... One SUV came racing through a round-about on 2 wheels and nearly collided with the Russell's vehicle. Yikes! Then a few miles down the road we passed a crash site, where people were pulling a man's body out of a roadside tree. Yikes! Yikes! The way people drive here is really problematic, and we have to be extra alert whenever we are on the road!

After a quick stop to lower the pressure of our tires, and a short drive into the desert, we found our camping spot. We arrived just as the sun was setting and began to set up camp.