1 tire, 2 tire, red tire, blew tire
This is a story about 3 cars, 2 trucks, 2 trailers..... and a whole bunch of tires.
geoffroi and I took a trip this past weekend for one last hoorah for the season at VIR. The overall trip was a blast and I cannot wait to do it again.... but Mr Murphy apparently liked us a lot... a whole lot.
First tire fatality was somewhere in Connecticut. geoffroi and I made very short work of replacing it road side. I'm truly amazed at how quickly we changed it, but I guess it helps when you have a truck full of tools for working on cars, including things like power tools and real jacks. That night we found a store open that had the proper tire and could remount the blown one for us. We opted to buy a second tire (not mounted) so we could get the spare remounted quickly if needed on our journey.
The second tire fatality was the next day... literally as we were starting our journey. It blew on the on-ramp to the highway. Luckily for us was not on our trailer, but on a friend's (who we met up with the night before).... I'm sure he didn't feel that lucky though. Turns out he had no spare, and his tires were actually all living on borrowed time, so he bought 4 new tires and a spare. We limped up to the next off-ramp to do a U-turn, and went back to the same store we had bought tires the night before, but they didn't have any. geoffroi started to call around and found a place that had 4 tires for him (I'm starting to love iPhones). Where was this garage? It was a stones throw from the off-ramp we used to turn around.
The rest of the trip to VIR was pretty uneventful, other then we were hours later then we had originally hoped. We had a blast at VIR... except for a not-so-great instructor and lots of fog at the beginning of day 2.
lots of fog
and then it cleared up
The return back home however was as eventful as the trip down. We were getting off the highway to have lunch when our friend called us to say that one of the tires on the trailer wasn't looking very good... and while he was on the phone with us, it blew! We pulled into a Cracker Barrel, and started to pull the tire off in the parking lot. I honestly thought we'd get a crowd of folks looking at us. 2 trucks, each pulling a trailer with a race car on it. Perhaps this is more common then I thought? Luckily we quickly found a garage down the street that had tires for us, and we did another swap.... with our current luck, and only 2 old tires to go... we bought _another_ unmounted spare. Luckily, nothing else happened on the rest of our trip.... other then being later then we wanted to.
Oh... I guess I forgot to mention that the 2 mounted spare tires (one for our trailer and one for the other guy's) kinda got lost. Best we can tell, they are sitting road side somewhere in Virginia. I guess when you get stressed and anxious to get rolling, you forget simple things.
Tire casualty list between all of us
And one last thing... We saw this on a semi while driving home. Some companies really need to fire their PR department... cause this is just wrong!
geoffroi and I took a trip this past weekend for one last hoorah for the season at VIR. The overall trip was a blast and I cannot wait to do it again.... but Mr Murphy apparently liked us a lot... a whole lot.
First tire fatality was somewhere in Connecticut. geoffroi and I made very short work of replacing it road side. I'm truly amazed at how quickly we changed it, but I guess it helps when you have a truck full of tools for working on cars, including things like power tools and real jacks. That night we found a store open that had the proper tire and could remount the blown one for us. We opted to buy a second tire (not mounted) so we could get the spare remounted quickly if needed on our journey.
The second tire fatality was the next day... literally as we were starting our journey. It blew on the on-ramp to the highway. Luckily for us was not on our trailer, but on a friend's (who we met up with the night before).... I'm sure he didn't feel that lucky though. Turns out he had no spare, and his tires were actually all living on borrowed time, so he bought 4 new tires and a spare. We limped up to the next off-ramp to do a U-turn, and went back to the same store we had bought tires the night before, but they didn't have any. geoffroi started to call around and found a place that had 4 tires for him (I'm starting to love iPhones). Where was this garage? It was a stones throw from the off-ramp we used to turn around.
The rest of the trip to VIR was pretty uneventful, other then we were hours later then we had originally hoped. We had a blast at VIR... except for a not-so-great instructor and lots of fog at the beginning of day 2.
lots of fog
and then it cleared up
The return back home however was as eventful as the trip down. We were getting off the highway to have lunch when our friend called us to say that one of the tires on the trailer wasn't looking very good... and while he was on the phone with us, it blew! We pulled into a Cracker Barrel, and started to pull the tire off in the parking lot. I honestly thought we'd get a crowd of folks looking at us. 2 trucks, each pulling a trailer with a race car on it. Perhaps this is more common then I thought? Luckily we quickly found a garage down the street that had tires for us, and we did another swap.... with our current luck, and only 2 old tires to go... we bought _another_ unmounted spare. Luckily, nothing else happened on the rest of our trip.... other then being later then we wanted to.
Oh... I guess I forgot to mention that the 2 mounted spare tires (one for our trailer and one for the other guy's) kinda got lost. Best we can tell, they are sitting road side somewhere in Virginia. I guess when you get stressed and anxious to get rolling, you forget simple things.
Tire casualty list between all of us
- purchased tires: 8
- blown tires: 3
- 'thrown away' in hopes of preventing further problems: 3
- lost: 2
And one last thing... We saw this on a semi while driving home. Some companies really need to fire their PR department... cause this is just wrong!