KA-BLOOEY!!!!

I am posting from a hotel room in Vicksburg, MS tonight.

No, I'm not on vacation, nor have I left my husband or ran away from home.

I am ferrying my oldest offspring back to college, which is about 14 hours of nonstop driving, or 2 days of a push or 3 days taking it easy. We're doing the 3 day plan (reward nights at hotels are a GOOD thing).

We started out today about 9:30 central time and did make our goal, but we were 2 hours later arriving than I had hoped. Why?

We had a BLOWOUT on the interstate.

We were driving along in the fast lane, passing a slower car, when we suddenly heard a really loud noise, as if we had hit a piece of sheet metal. There had been nothing in the road to runover...it took me a few seconds to realize that it was probably a tire.

Right rear. Thank goodness for AAA and Cell Phones. We called and got someone to come out and change the tire. (I was amused that the lady at AAA in Dallas thought we might need the police to protect us) I had a difficult time telling her where exactly on the interstate we were (very few cross streets ya know..lol.. and approx 37 miles west of Shreveport didn't do it for her). It took about an hour for the AAA wrecker to find us (plus 3 extra cell phone calls).

Unfortunately, this car has special locking lugnuts that if you don't use a particular tool correctly, you can't remove the tire. The guy from the wrecker service didn't know how to use the tool. So he couldn't remove the blown tire. He was in a regular truck, so he had to go back to his shop to get a flatbed wrecker.

Then he took us to a tire store and they took about another hour to get it done.. and my locking lugnut is no more on that tire. I haven't decided if this a good or bad thing.

Turns out somehow I had picked up a nail in that tire and it had worked it way though the side wall and ka-blooey!!!

Here are the good things about this incident today:

1) It happened in the daylight

2) It wasn't raining (rains are supposed to start tomorrow)

3) We were lead to an honest tire store. In our situation (needing transportation), they could've easily sold me 4 new tires intead of just one.


Some things I learned from this experience:

1) SLOW DOWN and/or MOVE OVER when you see someone with car trouble on the interstate.

It's amazing the number of semi's and cars and trucks that just kept on as usual.

I am impressed with the Covenant Transport line.. they moved over from the right to the leftlane to give me peace even though it would've been easier just to stay where they were.

2) LOOK for MILE MARKERS or other IDENTIFYING signs/sights before calling for help. This would've saved us a lot of time and frustration.

3)Try to make sure your AAA respondent is competent.

All in all, we are safe, the car has a new tire and I'm 1/3 of the way to taking the progeny back to college.