"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

The day started out good, at 3:30 a.m. Our goal was to transport a couple of friends to Tallahassee Regional Airport to catch a flight to Miami, New York and back to Halifax, Canada. We succeeded, but look what happened in between. Thank goodness we allowed a bit of extra time.

Vanishing Air Trick

Traveling via I-10 about half way there, we felt and heard the unmistakable rumble. A rear tire doing the vanishing air trick at 70 mph amongst all night truckers. Not wanting to be sitting on the side of the highway in high speed night time traffic we were obligated to drive a quarter mile or so to be better situated on a straight stretch.

Smiley Guy On TV

A quick flashlight check revealed indeed, our right rear tire was extremely flat on the bottom. Seems to be time for a call to that smiley guy you see on TV from CAA. We were told we were on a priority list and would receive a call back in short order. The last time I had a flat was back in the 50s when I was a young whipper snapper full of energy without the drink.

After waiting what seemed like an eternity for that call back, but probably wasn’t, I decided it was time to see if those fancy new fangled jacks, handles and exact placement diagrams worked.

As we unloaded the luggage and retrieved  the doughnut spare and jack, all the horror stories of highway crashes involving parked vehicles at night came to mind as traffic wizzed by at 70 mph in the dark just inches away. Can they see those hazard flashers? Are those drivers fully awake?

Thankfully all went well, and the task was accomplished in a little over 20 minutes counting reloading and stowing. Those doughnut spares use up less space, the reason for their design. But when you do use them, you have a full size tire and rim to deal with. Our service call-back came shortly after we were under way where we advised them to cancel, DIY did the job.

A Bird In The Hand Can Be Hot

One more note, to me and everyone: Put a good pair of thick work gloves in your vehicle. Due to traveling at high speed, and having to drive on the flat a short distance, the rim and wheel nuts were extremely hot, causing the job to be longer than necessary.

On our SUV the doughnut spare looked ridiculous. However I had read tests that they perform perfectly if used with reasonable caution. That proved to be true in this case, handling and braking were close to normal.

Our friends arrived at the airport in plenty of time and all was well as the saying goes. Now the destination for us is to return to Panama City Beach, getting the tire repaired or replaced as soon as we can. Guess what? There are hundreds of places to buy gas, but they have corner stores, not service stations. Other than tire dealers, there are no places on average to get a tire looked at.

There’s One

After covering over 200 miles, we arrived back at Panama City, all the while looking for ‘open’ tire repair places. “There’s one!” turned out to be Pep Boys a well known national chain. It was determined the tire was destroyed due to having to drive on it. Sidewalls were about the thickness and strength of a plastic bag.  Even though the other rear tire wasn’t half worn, it was recommended, and I agree that two tires should be installed. I won’t get into the details here, but my previous transportation experience convinced me long ago that replacing just one tire is not the way to go.

So several hundred dollars later, we are back to normal. Well Big Blue the SUV is. Our thanks to Pep Boys for assisting us immediately, with good service and reasonable prices.

Bad To The Bone

The cause of this days fabulous entertainment? Not a nail, not glass, not a piece of metal stuck in the tire – no, a half inch piece of bone managed to pierce and stick into our tire.

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License