When Good Cars Go Bad

We all knew it had to happen eventually. My Car of Awesomeness (who is rapidly approaching his first anniversary with me) has started down the dark path that the Truck of Malfunction forged many, many years ago.

I know at first I was a little worried when, less than a month in, we had that brief period where the car was possessed by Satan. But that was resolved in general short order, and there had been no problems since. (Unless you count the fact that it burns through gas so fast that I can literally watch as the gas gauge goes down, which is slightly demoralizing in an age where one gallon of gas costs more than a 12 pack of Coke. But let's not get into that.)

Then, about two months ago I started to notice that my left front tire was a little flat. Almost imperceptibly, but as time went on, it definitely got flatter. So I ran by a gas station, filled it back up, and fully intended to go get it checked out at the tire place.

But time passed and I grew complacent. It wasn't actually getting any flatter anymore, it was just one of those things. And then when it did start to get noticeably flat, I ignored the problem until my car actually started to pull towards the left. And again, I simply filled the tire with air rather than going to the store.

What can I say? I was young. And foolish. And the tire place was totally like at least seven miles up the road.

Okay, so maybe the car isn't so much heading down the TOM path of destruction so much as my own carefully crafted path of willful ignorance, but follow along, it's an exciting story.

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All of this rising action and foreshadowing leads us up to last weekend when I am supposed to drive out into deep East Texas for my Mom's family birthday lunch. As is our family tradition, the diaspora of our clan is temporarily put on hold, as we return together for a single meal on each member's date of birth. Usually held at a delightfully colorful theme restaurant.

We decide to shoot for a late afternoon meal, as going to church Sunday mornings always adds an extra element of complexity to the proceedings. I head out from Dallas just at 12:00 so I should arrive roughly at 2:30-2:45, with some spare room for traffic to make the 3:00 meeting time. I once again notice that my tire is looking a touch low, and thus do a quick fill up before I embark. (Note: this would be the third fill up of its kind in under 2 months. Lord knows I never was called the brightest bulb in the box.)

Things go great as the trip begins. Traffic is super light, I have both the new Hush Sound album and a copy of the latest offering from The National to obsess over/dance around to all the way up there.

Now the trip from Dallas to Longview is a relatively simple one. There is only one highway involved, and it is basically a straight horizontal line connecting the two cities. The only thing of note about the drive is that there is pretty much nothing in between the two places, besides a plethora of empty or cow-ridden fields. There is one city about 30 minutes outside the Metroplex, then the turn off for the only other mid size city (Tyler) and then nothing for upwards of 80 miles.

So of course, my tire chooses the dead center of this Nothing Span in which to completely blow out. I actually had about 15 seconds of warning about this, luckily, as my car started making a peculiar *Wwhoomp* *Wwhoomp* sort of noise as a precursor to becoming completely undrivable. This causes me to slow from 75 to 65 mph, which is probably the only thing that saved me from untimely death, as I still nearly careened straight off the road I was on and into a nearby creek. Instead, I slam on my breaks and am able to instead just crazy swerve my way over to the side of the road, minus a large portion of my tire.

After a couple of fun moments of hyperventilating, personal body checking to make sure all limbs were still intact, and nervous laughing, I make my way out of the car to survey the damage.

I pull out the jack and spend an agonizingly long period of time lying on the ground trying to find the lip of the car body that I'm supposed to brace it against. Then I spend an even longer time lying on the ground attempting to figure out how to pump up the jack using only this coat hanger-like apparatus that was packed in alongside it. Once I get the car up in the air and the old tire off, I'm able to see just how bad a blowout it was - nearly a 5 inch hole on the interior wall of the tire. It looks like the exit wound of a particularly nasty shotgun blast. I have a brief fever dream while lying on the side of the busy highway of an armed robbery gone bad in the interior of my left front tire - their last job before they were going to go straight too - until I shake myself out of it and get the little tiny spare tire attached to the car.

I'm wildly impressed with my tire changing abilities (which, yeah, I probably shouldn't be, but come on. Show of hands, how many of you would think I could change a tire under my own power without dropping a car on my head?) but now face the fact that I'm going to have to drive at least 60 miles in any one direction before I'm going to find civilization advanced enough to help me get off this Baby's First Tire that I've got going on.

Getting up to 60 mphs is an epic feat and strain for my car at this point, so we stick with about 55 mph, all the while wheezing down the highway as we are passed by 18 wheelers, uHauls, and even old people driving those giant camper houses on wheels, with dumb names like The Summer Breeze, or The Elegant Pelican. I'm thoroughly humiliated for my fancy luxury sedan, but at least it's still operational and we aren't in a sort of Deliverance/Wrong Turn situation where I'm forced to go wandering through the woods for help.

I decide to just head for Longview, as it's probably the closest and biggest place that I can reach without dying, and make it there with little further issue, although minus a large portion of my dignity. I arrive at the restaurant and the hostess blanches at the sight of me, probably thinking that she's going to have to rush some bum out of her fancy establishment. Finally for once I have an excuse for getting this look, as I'm pretty much covered head to toe in gravel, brake dust, jack grease, and God knows what else.

Being pretty sure that there isn't a place that could help me at this point anyways, I enjoy a nice leisurely (if soot covered) dinner with my family, who has awesomely waited around for an extra hour and a half just for me, chowing down on chips and what have you while placing side bets on what sort of disaster had befallen me this time.

Afterwards I make the long journey home to Dallas on the Tire of Stunted Growth, and find that if you just come to accept the fact that everyone on Earth is going to angrily rush by you, usually while flipping you off, driving can be really quiet and relaxing. Almost therapeutic. I'm not sure that it was worth the extra 2 hours of transit time, but it wasn't as horrible as I anticipated.

Still, getting the bird from the elderly driver of The Regal Eagle? It sticks with you.

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The next day I was able to get two new front tires and a front end alignment (the real reason for the blowout, apparently, insomuch as my alignment was far enough off that the inside of the tire was getting worn down about 10 times faster than it should be) with almost no trouble, assuming I didn't mind mortgaging my first born against the costs. Seriously, owning a fancy car is cool and all, but who would have ever expected that an expensive car would have associated expensive repair and maintenance costs? That shit just comes out of nowhere.

So to recap - stupidity and lack of CONSTANT VIGILANCE against potential car problems causes tire explosion and near death of the driver, but plucky ingenuity saves the day over said stupidity and everyone survives, just minus all their disposable income for the month.

Oh, and the bastards at the tire place totally lost one of my lug nuts on the tire they replaced. Which will take them as long to fix as it is taking the city to repair my gas at home. (Meaning they'll both be in place sometime around my 40th birthday.)

Woo and hoo.