Freewheel burning

If you’re driving from, say, San Diego to Phoenix, a really bad place to get a flat tire would be, say, outside Dateland, AZ.

So that’s what we did.

I noticed a bit after we took off from our delicious burger slash potty break slash gas fill-up in Yuma that the road noise was increasing, but put it off to a bad stretch of highway. But after a while the noise didn’t abate, but instead got worse, so I started thinking bad tire.

And then, about ten miles east of Dateland: kaboom. Fortunately, it was a rear tire, so very little drama, just pull over to the side of the highway, right before exit 73 to “Aztec,” which Google Maps apparently knows nothing about.

We called AAA and got word that they would send somebody, but it would take at least an hour for that somebody to get to us (I’m thinking airlift), and that they would not have fresh tires with them, so if the donut didn’t work, we’d have to be towed to Lord knows where.

So I broke out my mad tire changing skillz and got the donut on there, yo.

Both the owner’s manual and the donut itself carry dire warnings about the nebulous horrible things that will happen if you drive faster than 50 miles per hour while, er, donuted, which did not sound like so much fun, so we called AAA back to see if perhaps there was a Discount Tire in Gila Bend, the next Metropolis on our journey? That’s a negatory, Ice Man.

So we drove the remaining 150 or so miles to Phoenix at 50 miles per hour on the donut. It took a bit longer than originally anticipated.