Retro Post: Don't try this at home.

Last night, my hour and fifteen minute commute turned into a 2 hour commute thanks to airport construction and lane closures. Starting at 8:00 p.m. they shut down all Westbound lanes on the interstate for 20 min. at a time, and when they reopen, only about 40 cars get to go through before they shut it down again. Which just frustrates me no end when I don't get home until after 10:00. And what better way to segue into Amanda Y's favorite post from my old blog. And yes, it's a long one.

I debated calling this entry “tire go boom”. Yeah, it’s been one of those days. I’m driving to school through the wonderful construction by the airport. Now, this construction will be going on till 2016. And I’m not exaggerating. Usually it just adds a few minutes to my journey, or if it’s after 8 at night, they shut down all the lanes for 20 minutes at a time. But neither of those have ever cost me money.

But today, my car starts shaking and making weird noises like I’m going over rumble strips. So I let off the gas a bit, and keep praying I’ll make it to the next exit. I get almost there and I hit the brakes lightly. And as I do, my tire blows out, jerking my car back and forth before I finally get it off to the side of the road. At this point all I can smell is rubber, and smoke is billowing out and around my car. So I’m officially freaking out as I do any time something happens to my car. After a couple of minutes, I get out to look, and my front tire is in shreds. Parts of the rubber are all over the place in a 10 meter radius from my car.

So I did what any self respecting, independent woman of this millennium would do. I called daddy. And waited, and waited as dad tried to find a number on the internet for a wrecking service. (Now under normal circumstances, I’d like to think that I would change my own tire. But this time, I was barely out of the interstate lanes of traffic and it was my front driver’s side tire. And I had these visions of being on some Fox special ‘dumb drivers making big mistakes’ or something like that.) So after 20 minutes and 3 state cops pass right by me, my dad finally gets me a number for a wrecker.

I call the wrecking place, and she tells me that they will be there in 15 minutes. The place is located about 2 miles away and she assured me he would be leaving there in the next couple of minutes. An hour and a half later, the guy shows up. I’m a bit peeved by this point, and I get out of my car and help the guy find my spare. I can barely hear him since the trucks flying by are so loud, but he’s lecturing me about the do's and don'ts of standing on the interstate and making some sort of small talk about being late because he had to shower.

Now this is wrong for so many reasons. First, I’ve been sitting in my car for an hour and a half choking on the smell of rubber while the car shakes every time a car/truck speeds by at 70mph. And second, now I’m standing outside being practically blown over every time someone flies by, and now this guy is telling me he "freshened up" for the occasion. I swear I didn’t stage this whole thing because I was really trolling for dudes in wrecking trucks, so why the hell would I care if you smell bad.

So tire changed (for a charge of $35 of course) and I have to get a new one because I can’t drive back home on the spare. Cut to half an hour later at the tire place. (When you live in the middle of BFE it takes forever to get anywhere). Tire guy is really nice, comes out to inspect the shredded wheat that is my former tire in my trunk, and then goes to check the computer. Then he comes to tell me that he doesn’t have a tire in my size and that I could hang around for 4 hours till one comes in. Which leads me to 2 points. 1, why the hell can’t they make tires in standard sizes. And 2, how the hell do you run a tire place, where the sole thing you do is sell tires, and you don’t have one in my size.

Luckily for me, there was a competing tire place not 10 feet from this one, and they did have my size in stock. For a grand total of $70 bucks, it would be on my car in less than a half hour. That gets done, and at this point, I realize that if I left now, I would make it to class just on time. Nevermind the fact that there is no parking at that time of day, and I’d probably spend a hour driving around for a spot. And my nerves are all a bit shot. Needless to say, I came home to rest the rest of the day, and of course let you all know about it.