Tires Tire Me Out

I have a love-hate relationship with vehicle tires. I learned how to change a tire in Driver's Ed, way back in the dark ages, but never had to apply that knowledge. Until 1994. Thus began our torrid affair.

It was a late winter/early spring weekend, and a college friend and I were driving on a rural stretch of highway en route to visit a potential grad school. It was raining cats and dogs. I was driving my 1992 Plymouth Sundance. Suddenly, I heard a loud POP and I started having a hard time keeping the car in one lane.

I pulled over on this lonely stretch of highway and discovered that I had a tire blow out. And it was raining cats and dogs. I get the owner's manual out and refresh my memory on changing the tire. I formulate a plan to get the spare out of the trunk and get the tire changed in the least amount of time. We get the job done, got soaked to the bone, and I skinned my knuckles pretty bad in the process.

Next step was to find a service station that could fix my tire, since the spare was only a donut and wouldn't be able to handle the rest of the trip. Easier said than done on a Sunday afternoon in rural northern Kentucky.

To make a long story short, we finally found a service station, got the tire fixed, and continued on our merry way. (A piece of road debris had pierced the tire.) Then I continued to have random weird tire troubles.

Another flat tire caused by driving in the grass at the campground. Random flat tire driving around town. And the time someone clipped my truck and broke the tire rim. Don't even get me started about the flat tire on Hubby's jeep when we were at Storm-thus 2002. (That was a definte bounding experience in our courtship.) And in the last five years, we seem to have vehicles with tires that continually have issues.

Our current mini-van has had two tires with issues. The current issue is causing me to get air about twice a week. Hubby tried fix-a-flat. Now it's time to take it to a service station and get the stupid thing fixed.

I know there are worse problems that I could have. But c'mon. I'm really tired of having tire issues.

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