Sep 02 2007

The Tale of a Trashed Tire

Published by at 3:24 pm under Happenings

I was headed to church yesterday morning.  Laura wasn’t planning to stay the whole time because her back was hurting – so we took separate cards.  I had left in my own car early so that I could make some copies for handouts.

I was coming off of 270 over the big hill that starts the ride down 170 in towards the church.  What I didn’t hear was a bang or pop of any kind.  I just felt the car get suddenly sluggish and a whomp whomping sound.  I was in the fast lane so I was going to head to the left shoulder, but as I looked behind me and noticed that there was no traffic I decided to cross over and stop on the right hand shoulder.

I walked around the car to see if the front tire had blown.  David S. had told me at a church board meeting three weeks ago that my front tires looked low.  I had filled them up with air that night and thought everything was all better.  To my surprise it was the left rear tire that had blown.

I got back in my car and thought about what I was going to do next.  I called Laura to tell her about it, when she answered the phone I asked if she had left yet.  She hadn’t because she just heard from her parents that her grandfather’s health was declining fast.  I let that sink in as she told me that we needed to be ready to make plans to travel to Lincoln if the need arose.  Well I had to tell her what was up – so I just said it, “Well I’m sitting on the side of the road with a blown out tire.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked?
“Well, I guess I’ll be getting out there changing it.” I replied blandly.
“Do you want us to stop when we get there?”
“No.  You can just wave at me as you go by.”

I hung up and decided to memorialize the occasion by sending an update to Twitter.  For some reason whenever I send a tweet, it also goes to my wife’s phone – so she got a second notice.

It wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be to change the tire.  At least I got to take my tie off.  I see no purpose for those glorified scarfs.  So I sent a text message that I was done and I was ready to pull back out on the road when I saw our van slowing down and putting on her blinker.  So I put my blinker on to signal that I was done already and I intended to get going.  And with that we headed off to church.

Now today we had to figure out how to take care of this.  I ended up heading to Sam’s Club, getting my picture so I’m not carrying around a temporary card anymore and getting new tires.  If one blew out, who knew which one was next – so in typical style we said, “Just replace them all.”  How this is going to impact our brand new September budget remains to be seen.

It took about an hour to get it taken care of and I’m back at home.  Just another atypical day, but it’s not over yet.  I still need to go visit our renter if I can get a hold of her to collect the rent…  how will that fare?

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