05 Alaska Bound- Crossing the Alaska Border & Getting Screwed

We're just a few km's away I believe from the border. So we thought it would be smart to pull over, double check everything, clean up a little bit, make sure everything's ready for our crossing in case they need to come in and inspect the rig. Squeezing all my mandarins just in case. They don't let us bring them across that way I don't lose my mandarins. They're already juiced We didn't do our due diligence and check online before we came across. We even heard at the visitor center the lady recommending a few tips to somebody else. Then we forgot to go back by and get the details. So irresponsible. We're just kind of winging it. Story of our life. Thing is getting nervous. We've got a border crossing coming up. You can definitely see why they call it the top of the world highway. Definitely up here. Even though it's a dirt road it's actually smoother than some of the other like paved highways we've been on so on a nice day I don't think this road is so bad. Seems kind of okay. It's our own country yeah so we're going to choose not to record what happens because we're not sure if it's legal and we most certainly don't want to piss off the country we live in so we're just thinking it's a good idea. Better safe than sorry on this one and by the way the road got a little more rough as we get closer to the border so hopefully it won't clear back up. It's not horrible but it I mean it's a bumpy dirt road but we're still cruising along. It's not like super washed out. We're going how fast are we going? 45 miles an hour. Not too shabby. U.S. border station one half mile. Caution gate ahead. We're kind of nervous because we're not sure if they close at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. It is 701 on the dot according to the GPS. I'm a little nervous. I feel like anytime I've ever gotten pulled over or searched or anything it's always been coming back into the U.S. and they're always the ones that take take some stuff. And that's what nice pavement sounds like. Yeah. Holy smokes. Border closed 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Office closed. Let's see. Okay. I want to stop here. Proceed to inspection on green light. Yeah. Okay. So till 9 p.m. then? 9 p.m. 9 p.m. for this time of year as of right now. So there you go. That's what it said. I mean that could change anytime. Yeah. We're way out here. Green light. Okay. See you on the flip side. Excellent. Thank you so much. Oh yeah. I appreciate it. Nicest border patrol agent I might have ever had. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. He was so nice. He of course asked all the obligatory questions. Are you carrying any firearms? Did we have any raw chicken? Because of the whole bird flu thing. He did say technically apples aren't allowed. Citrus isn't allowed. Unless it's. So he said apples unless they're in season. He said there's all kinds of like extra details. He said check the website. And he's like may or may not be updated. But he wasn't too particular about any of it. Just mostly the the raw chicken thing. And of course firearms. And then did we acquire anything such as alcohol? Which we only bought a six pack recently. So that's all we had. So no biggie there. No biggie there. They he only asked about what we acquired in Canada. So not what we had before or anything like that. Yeah. And we asked for more information. But we don't we don't necessarily want to ask too much. Yeah. How's all of our other liquor that we brought in from the United States? Is that okay? Like once you're once you're at that border crossing. The last thing you want to do is offer up too much information. Yeah. We just got to this instant rest rest area right when you pull over. So we're going to get out and take a peek and take a breath. That was always always a little stressful. The obligatory welcome to Alaska sign photo. Oh yes. There you go. I'll just say welcome to Alaska. Oh sure. Me? Yeah hold on. Oh singer got out. I said uh oh. Nope. We got a leak. Yeah. Leak from what? I don't know. We have air leaking out of the tire. It's coming out pretty good. Yeah I can hear that. I had bought some quick spare tire junk. Unfortunately it says emergency flat tire repair for small tires. I don't think this classifies as a small tire. No but I think something's better than nothing. Something's better than nothing I hope. Ah found it. Big one? It's a nail. Is it? Yep. So you're supposed to leave the nail in or take it out? I can't remember. Oops. We'll try the slime because that's all I got. Our tire pressure monitor though it was working because it was telling me that I had low pressure but I just thought it was due to the fact that we were climbing mountains and the temperature is kind of hot but yet kind of cool in the shade. It actually worked. Shake can. Do not remove puncturing object. Oh do not remove puncturing object. So there's the answer for that. Do not remove the screw. Screw nozzle into valve until contents dispense. Inflate until inflate until can is empty and rim is off the ground. It's acting like it wants me to it wants me to take all the air out of the tire. And then you're supposed to re-inflate it? Then you re-inflate it with this can which is why this is made for a small tire. I'm afraid to do that. No because it's such a big tire. Yeah that's 90 psi. It's only at 85 psi right now so it's only lost a little bit. We probably could make it another couple hours. I don't know how far away chicken is. Here goes everything. Oh I bet I bet it wants you to get rid of the air so the contents can actually get inside the tire. I can hear a little bit of something Think it's working? I doubt it. Yeah I have a feeling this is going to the actual connector. Yeah and not going anywhere else. It looks like it's just slowly leaking out. I can see it just pouring out of there. Okay watch out it might explode. I don't know. Well that's a fail. Damn. Yeah it's all still in there. Dang it. So we are gonna wing it because some guys just pulled over and said the chicken is only about an hour. And we're gonna see if we can make it there before the tire goes but we do have the tire pressure monitoring system so hopefully it'll keep an eye on the exact pressure for us and if we feel like it's too low we can pull over and try to air it up. And if not then we'll just figure it out. I don't know. That's where we are. Look at that beautiful tarmac. Baby. Looking good. Smooth as butter. I have a nail in my dang tire. My GPS wants to pretend like this road doesn't exist so I have no idea how far away chicken it is. How far away chicken is. The dudes that came and pulled over they looked like they were high to say the least and they were like that's a wicked party oh my god chicken's only like an hour away so I don't really trust them either. And to top it all off my gas tank says it's less than a quarter of a tank which means about a hundred maybe a hundred miles or so before we are empty. Needless to say things aren't looking so hot and we could potentially be up creek excuse my french without a paddle. On multiple levels. Oh yeah cell phones don't work. Yeah this is the one downside of not really ever planning very well at least. Debbie's definitely starting to feel the stress of everything compounding and I agree the gas thing is. That AC doesn't work so it's hot. Damn it. Yep he's getting frustrated. It's gonna get good pretty soon we'll get the like he runs it all together and he comes up with every curse word he's ever known and just crams it into one solid word. It's very interesting if we get there try to capture it. We just hit 51 psi so that's almost half. I'm gonna go ahead and pull over as the next pull out and see if my air pump can can maybe handle it. Here this is the bed I haven't organized yet. Do not pull here okay. This thing is legit. Yay welcome to Alaska. Okay. I love Jason but sometimes he can be the bit uh he can be a bit of a Tim the Tool Man Taylor. I don't know if you ever saw Tool Time. That's kind of Jason or if you've seen our How Not To videos then you kind of know why I'm nervous. I gotta turn it on. Point made. I'm not a fan of this this stupid braided thing. I can't get pressure on. Oh I know this is working. All right I think I'm giving it air but you'll have to keep an eye on the I can't see the dial you'll have to do it for me. Okay. What do you think? Is it working? I don't know. It was higher before now it's lower so maybe you're just losing air so fast you can't. Well I'm I keep moving because this stupid braided connector from the tire. The exhaust is right here. Not ideal. A whole lot of crap. Supposed to be the best one you can buy for an RV and obviously I didn't read the directions so I think this one actually can screw on and maybe that'll fix my problem. Maybe he won't have to curse so much. I'm not judging. Not judging. Okay it's reading the pressure. Oh that would be bad. I just popped out the instructions again and this is a air filter so I think there's actually a plug keeping the air from entering which is why it's not working. Learning under pressure is never good. Remove temporary protective red plug. Oh there you go. Install inlet air filter into compressive air inlet port. Hand tighten inlet air filter. Also low on fuel. Yes we're low on fuel too so now I think it's working. We should have plenty of charge on the chassis battery. Now it's going. Now we're cooking with Crisco. All right when I let go it shows 62. Yay! I knew other RVers didn't lie to me when they told me this is the best one. I was like this piece of crap's not working. This idiot didn't read the directions. Shows almost 70. Hey so we can drive 20 miles, stop put air in, until the nail comes out and then we're just apt. Yeah totally. We just got to make it an hour according to the stoner dudes at the pullout. They are so reliable. All right 94 that's gonna do. That'll do. That'll do. I'm not gonna put this away because I have a feeling we're gonna need it again. Yep let's just put it inside the coach. Oh man my tire pressure monitor just told me it's at 20 psi. Which means it's not holding at all. 20 psi yeah so that must mean that the nail has come dislodged or it's just torn a complete hole in the traction or the tread. I did see a sign where 30 miles run chicken so I'm just gonna go 15 miles an hour be there in an hour and I don't there's no cell phone. I don't know what else we could do. There's probably nothing else we could do so this is this is what we're doing. It's official. Oh and the road turned back to dirt so we lost our beautiful tarmac so I'm sure that's not helping at all. There's still plenty of pressure in there so I think maybe my um tire pressure monitoring systems let me know that the air is leaking out really fast so there's zero pressure left. I don't know what it's telling me but. It's definitely not like crazy flat. Yeah it's not like falling off the rim flat yet. All right well then let's hop back in and keep going. And at least you can try to drive faster. Yeah I know that's what I'm saying. Yay safety first. This is how stressed out Singa is about the entire situation. Yeah is it real rough? Now it's jumping all over the place 15, 21, 16. It doesn't know what to think. It's been the longest 30 miles we've driven in a really really long. We made it. We made it to the chicken. Here's the deal. We got a kit and the guy said this is the kit you want to have if you have an RV. It's got these things. It's got some rubber cement. It's got a screwy drilly thingy and it's got a plugger. Yep. Yep. It's a screw or a nail? Yeah it's a screw. It was a phillips head. Self-drilling. So far so good. This thing I'm not flipping you off. I promise. I can't believe there's not like air just like rushing out of there. He said you can't damage it. This way. There's your air. You know what I should do? What? I should just double check the directions. Ah here we go. Step number two. Put two or three drops of cement on tip of probe and insert into injury. Work probe up and down to clean injury channel. Repeat this process two to three times. Is that just the tip yeah? That's what it says. Don't leave it there too long. It is rubber cement. Oh yeah. Yep that's probably good. There's your air leak honey. It says work probe up and down. Repeat this process two to three times. Insert end of repair material through eye of needle and pull through until strip is centered in needle. Apply cement to tip of needle. Okay. Got it. Now you're supposed to put rubber cement on the tip. Again. Again just the tip. It says the tip but I'd load that sucker up. Insert needle firmly into the tire injury all the way to the needle handle. Leave a four or a quarter inch of string outside the tire. Okay so you're supposed to squeeze it all the way in there until it's only quarter of an inch out. That's what it says. I don't know if my hole's deep enough. It sounds like personal problem. Quarter inch. Yeah and it says turn the handle one quarter turn and remove needle. Okay turn it a quarter turn and remove handle. Uh-huh. Okay. Can you guys see what I'm doing? Yes. All the kids at home see you. Then what? Okay then it says cut insert one eighth an inch from tread. Why didn't I just push it in further? And then it says inflate tire to normal operating pressure and test for air leaks. Then take tire immediately to a professional. Is that what it says? Full service tire shop where permanent tire repair can be performed according to RMA guidelines. This just looks dangerous. Yeah. And that whole thing about taking it to a professional. Yeah we're gonna do that. Well we might get there and they might say oh your goal but you know. Yeah we'll go get a second opinion we'll start with that. God I cut myself a little bit. Did you really? Yeah just a little bit. Where? Right there. See that? I'm gushing blood. Finish it up so we can go have a beer. Okay I'm done now I just gotta air it up. I just want to thank all those out there who believed in me. This is for you. Believed in you. This is thumbs up. I'm gonna go air her up. Grab yourself a band-aid while you're at it. Oh thanks. Just don't use any of the local water it's got a coli. Not think that through. PSI okay. 84 well 83.5. Put my pressure monitor back on. I think that wraps up a wonderful day on the road. Welcome to Alaska. One last note all of the things we used today that totally saved our arse like the air pump and the tire pressure monitoring system and the little plug stuff. What's the plug stuff? Plug stuff. Okay plug stuff yeah. Anyway we'll link to all of that in the post and we'll put a link somewhere here so anyway you can check it all out in case you need it too because you never know when you're gonna get screwed. Oh let's go have a drink. Okay sounds like a plan. I know where the parkour is.