Roadtrip Aborted
Last weekend, I drove up to Seattle to both satisfy my Kim-Withdrawal-Symptoms and Must Get Out of Town-itis. Kim has been going through some horrible apartment allergies issues, so we decided to combine all symptoms into a road trip. Since Vancouver BC was out for obvious reasons, we decided to head west towards Spokane. We got as far as Snoqualmie Pass when the car suddenly started going: Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk from the driver's side front tire. Uh oh.
We were close to the pass summit, with snow by the side of the road (but not on the road), the nearest towns 30 miles or so in either direction, around 10pm, little road shoulder, and few street lights. Perfect place for a tire blow out. Luckily, the tire didn't actually blow. After some failed experimentation of trying to use our cell phones as flash lights and some wary tire examination in between cars whizzing by at 70 mph mere feet from us, we eventually figured out that there was a quarter inch thick and foot and a half long strip of tire hanging from the left front tire. The tire wasn't flat, but the inside of the tire was worn down to the wires, which is not generally a good sign.
So we put on the hazard lights and slowly drove to the next major exit. We lucked out again because that exit turned out to be a big ski area with a Howard Johnson and a gas station. Changing a tire and dealing with loosening the bolts and the jack and the spare and all that fun stuff could wait until the morning and full sunlight. Major plus. I called Aaron and had him figure out where the nearest tire place was (which turned out to be back in Bellevue), and we called it a night after watching some Olympic Ice Dancing on the tv. (Commericials are such a novel concept these days.)
The next day we discovered that most of the tools included with my car jack were completely not useful, but mostly got the car jacked up. Or Kim did, anyway. She wouldn't let me help much. And then she tried jumping up and down on the wrench to move the bolts holding the tires in place. They resisted all 120 pounds of her. A very nice man in a minivan saw her attempts and came to help us. After a few minutes of talking, he actually ended up removing the bolts, jacking up the car more, changing the spare, and replacing the bolts... all in about 5 minutes. Our hero! (I felt like such a useless pregnant girl.)
And so we drove back to Bellevue, got four new tires, went to the IMAX to watch Avatar in 3D, and stayed in Seattle at the apartment of one of Kim's friend since our tire escapade didn't leave enough time for much road trip action. We crashed really hard (figuratively) that night after it was all over. Very Big Day. The rest of the weekend involved hanging out, chatting, eating, walking around, and napping. Before I left Seattle, I managed to get ahold of an old high school friend and had some long overdue coffee and catching up. It was a most excellent end to an eventful weekend.