Tires and Tribulations

I will return soon to the promised series following up on the Government post from last week. In the interim I've been busy and am in St. Louis right now at a BSA management training. The experience thus far was getting here.

I drove here as it was cheaper than flying and decided to drive down Sunday so that I could take some time getting here. This was a good idea. About 30 miles north of Bloomington, IL, my car started making a loud racket and handling badly. Crap! I pulled to the shoulder and found that the rear passenger side tire was flat. No big deal, I'll swap it out with the spare. It was a doughnut, but thought the other tire was still salvagable. Then I pulled it off and found that was not the case. I had gotten a screw in the tire and then a blowout (about a 2 inch hole in the "corner" of the tire) and then drove on it to pull to the shoulder and put a nice series of holes in the tire wall. It was well and truly dead. I figured that I might still be able to get a new tire on Sunday and called Pontiac Roadside Assistance to find a nearby shop. The only one was WalMart, which I hate, but I swallowed my pride and went there at 60mph down the freeway.

I got there only to find that the tires on my car are not a common size yet (225/50 R17). So I had to find a room in Bloomington for the evening and was thankfully able to cancel my reservation in St. Louis without a cost. I awakened early Monday and found a tire shop with my tire size in stock. Downside was that the new tire was $230 and no one in town carried the tire that matched the brand. Now I have a $230 tire on my car that does not match the other three.

Lessons learned:
--Low Profile Tires are harder to notice going flat while driving
--The tires are bloody expensive and rare
--WalMart Associates can actually be helpful
--Always have plastic to cover problems and allow time for them to happen

The frustrating part was that this is the first flat tire I have ever had on a car I own. That's 4 vehicles and over 200,000 miles of driving. Thankfully I got my practice last year at Thanksgiving with Barry on changing tires quickly.