Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Driving Hazards

The Scenic Ride is limping today... going slow with one of those toy spare tires on it.

Yesterday, driving back from a fun furniture hunting trip in Fort Worth (for See How They Run), it ran over something small but lethal on IH 30 that INSTANTLY! blew out a tire.


A minute later I was pulled over on the, thankfully, wide side of the road realizing that:

a) I had a bad flat
b) I had a new toy spare and jack etc. that I had never practiced with
c) I had all that tire gear buried under boxes and boxes of set dressing (for Crimes of the Heart)... and
d) It was 100+ degrees out there.

Rather later I realized that even a wide roadside - and I was pulled waaaay over, half on the grass - still meant that 14 wheeler trucks were zooming past my ear at 75 miles an hour and that was way too close for comfort.

After I'd jacked up the poor Scenic Ride, removed its old wheel, and was sweating mightily as I struggled to put on the new toy wheel, the courtesy truck came by and a nice man showed me how to use my weird new jack handle properly.  I felt foolish and over-heated (though I had done most of the work myself) and slightly deaf in my traffic-side ear.

Then someone else pulled over with a flat... caused by the same debris on the road.

Today?  Buying a new tire... at about $ 250.

Sigh.

Wish my flat tire experience had been as glamorous as pictured below.  Notice that this distressed lady-motorist looks neither sweaty nor flustered, though the wind from passing trucks has obviously affected her...

I bet she won't be changing her own tire either:

Flat Tire by Elvgren - believed public domain image

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