[HIGHWAY BY THE SEA]

I wanted to throw this out there for the safety of other board members, and anyone else reading the board.
Recently I was driving my heirloom 68 LWB stepside C10 down a country road as I have done hundreds of times before. All of a sudden the rear end went airborne and came crashing down to the road again. As I was wondering what the devil had just happened, I noticed a very familiar-looking spare tire bouncing down the road in the rear-view mirror behind me. It came to rest in the ditch, so I stopped and threw it into the truck bed.
So here is apparently what occurred: I put this brand-new spare tire under the truck into its factory-correct bracket several years ago. In all that time I hav
e NEVER had a flat with this particular truck. So, as they say, out of sight, out of mind.
Over the years, the air in said tire had gone down a bit as tends to happen with unused tires. So as I was driving down the road, the now-smaller tire apparently worked itself loose from the spare tire bracket, and the front of it touched down on the road. This literally pole-vaulted the rear end of the truck into the air and unleashed the spare tire onto an unsuspecting public roadway.
I shudder to think of what could have occurred had this happened on the interstate highway. The tire would have undoubtedly hit other cars and ping-ponged back and forth between the interstate dividers, striking fast-moving vehicles as it went, since it would have had nowhere else to go. And I would have been driving interstate speed, so this also could have caused the truck to flip over, or loss of control and a terrible accident.
I thank my lucky stars that I was driving only 40ish MPH on a deserted country road when this occurred. So I am saying to everyone reading this:
CHECK THE AIR IN YOUR SPARE TIRE EVERYTIME YOU CHANGE YOUR OIL OR SIMPLY THINK ABOUT DOING IT.
It may save a life, including your own.