It could be worse -- or could it?

If you've spent any time traveling in an RV, you know that things can go wrong.

All RVers dread the thought of breaking down on the road. That's why most RVers carry Roadside Assistance insurance. I have coverage with Good Sam.

Thank goodness, I've never had to be towed

In 10 years of being on the road, I've only had a roadside breakdown two times, and I didn't have to be towed either time. They both involved problems with tires.

One time I had a tire on my dolly blow out. The tires were seven years old, so I should have already replaced them. I was lucky in this case. Just as I pulled over to the side of the road, one of the SC Roadside Assistance trucks saw me and stopped. How lucky could I get? I had a spare, and the guy jacked my dolly up and put the spare on in a matter of minutes. All of this was at no charge. He wasn't even allowed to take a tip.

The other time there was a plastic bag of trash in the road. There was oncoming traffic, so I couldn't keep from hitting the bag. I didn't think running over the bag of trash would do any harm anyway, but it did. Somehow the plastic bag got tangled up with the tire pressure sensor and ripped it off of the valve stem on my front tire. The tire went flat almost immediately.

I called Good Sam, but it was going to be a few hours before they could show up, so I decided that I would put the spare tire on myself. I did a little more checking and found out that all I needed to do was to replace the tire pressure sensor (I had a spare) and pump the tire up.

The first situation could have been prevented if I had replaced the tires on my dolly sooner. The second situation probably couldn't have been prevented. It was just a freak situation that happened.

I've been spending the last two weeks since I returned from Costa Rica doing preventive maintenance and upgrading a few things on my motorhome.

Here's a list of some of the things I'm working on

• Putting new, larger, heavy-duty tires on the dolly. (I put two new tires on after I had the blowout, but I didn't do enough checking, and the ones I put on were not rated to carry the load).

• Installed a 3rd lithium-ion battery.

• Installed a trailer hitch on the Prius I bought when I returned from Costa Rica. The one I had on my 2012 Prius wouldn't fit. I don't use the hitch much, but sometimes when I need to move the dolly around at a campground, I can't move it by hand when it's not on level ground.

• Install a "Soft-start device on one of my air conditioners. This makes the A/C easier to start when I'm using the generator.

• I'm going to move my three lithium-ion batteries inside under the kitchen cabinets. They won't take a charge below 25 degrees. I don't plan on ever being where the temperature will be below 25 degrees, but it happened last year in Galveston, so I want to be prepared.

• The generator that came with the motorhome wore out last year, so I replaced it with a 3,500 inverter type generator from Harbor Freight. I love the generator, but I need to finish installing it on a slide-out tray. And also configure it so I can get gasoline from the motorhome. Having a generator doesn't help if the gas stations don't have electricity to pump gas. I found this out the hard way last winter.

Bottom line: There are a bunch of other minor things that I need to do. Some of them will get done, but I'm sure not everything will. That's part of RV life. You never get everything finished.

What have you repaired or modified lately on your RV? Let me know in the Discussion Forum.