Lucky or Unlucky? You Be The Judge

[ajacs]

I occasionally carpool with one of my coworkers; we meet at the park-n-ride lot at the junction of 476 and 76. We had probably gone two months without carpooling before this week, when we decided to carpool yesterday and today. This morning, I was on the exit ramp from 476 to Matsonford Road, 100 yards from the park-n-ride lot, when, while changing to the correct turn lane, I felt a pop from under my wheels. The steering very suddenly became very unresponsive, and a sort of grinding noise came from the front wheels. I was moving at maybe 2 mph, so I was not in danger, and my first thought was that I'd hit some debris in the road that I hadn't seen, and either had a flat tire or was dragging something (like a cone) in the wheel well. I put my blinkers on, got to the side, and hopped out. Nothing was visibly wrong with any of the tires. I got back in, restarted the car, and the noise and steering difficulty persisted, but keeping the car in a straight line was pretty easy, and very slowly, I managed to make it the rest of the way to the park-n-ride. My coworker arrived a few minutes later, and he drove us to work. I now have the annoyance of arranging for service on the car, and the currently unknown expense of fixing it, but no other problems.

So, am I unlucky to have to deal with whatever this is, or lucky that it didn't occur 1 minute earlier, when I was traveling at 65 mph? I'm currently going with a little of both.