Yeah, that is when it all started. Last Friday the thirteenth. I am not at all superstitious. But after all this, I don’t know.
First my power went out. It was only for a couple of hours, and before it got dark (good luck?). I live in Detroit. But still power outages are rare. Then over the weekend someone tried to hack my email account. They were unsuccessful (ditto?). Then my car indicator said one of my tires had low pressure. It was stable. So it didn’t appear to need my immediate attention. But the other day as I drove home, something totally unexpected happened. My rear tire blew out. I didn’t hit a curb or pothole. But the pressure loss was immediate. I was just a couple of blocks from home. And as I pulled in, I was running on rims. I got replaced today FWIW.
But if I wasn’t near home, can you imagine how much trouble I would be in? It was late at night too. Oh, and OnStar was no help naturally. I trust you can see a pattern emerging here. Always bad luck, but with a silver lining.
MISSED EDIT WINDOW:Oh, and by the way, the front tire still is lower on pressure. But it’s stable and the pressure is relatively good. It may be due to weather changes. Yeah, I was going to take to my dealership to have it looked at. But they closed early due to the Coronavirus. And I was waiting for the tire guy (naturally).
I’ll tell you my flat tire story. I spent the last five months living in Cambria, California. It’s a beautiful area and I decided to go for a ride to Big Sur. It was a tremendously stormy day. After about 20 or 30 minutes of driving, I came to an area that had suffered a rock slide and I ended up getting a flat tire. Whatever I had run over had ripped that tire wide open. I drove to the closest place I could find to get off of this very narrow part of the highway.
I had no service on my phone and the only home I could see in the pouring rain and fierce wind was surrounded by a locked tall gate that I couldn’t get past. I was in the middle of nowhere. I had a spare, but I have never changed a tire in my life and doubted my ability to do so. I’m pretty small and I don’t think I could have loosened the bolts or jacked up the car.
I turned on my flashers but there was very little traffic and the first several cars just passed me by. I was really starting to get sort of freaked out when a truck pulling a large travel trailer stopped and the driver offered to help. He had to pull up quite a ways to find a spot to get off the road and then walk back to help me. After he and his son had changed my tire, they started to return to their vehicle. I noticed that the man had started to run and wasn’t sure why. As I began to drive to where they were, I saw that his truck and trailer had been blown off the side of the road and down a bit of a gully. It was a twisted mess. And then I saw a woman working her way up the hill very carefully. Unbeknownst to me, the wife had been lying on the back seat of the truck when the road gave way.
I started to cry so hard. They were so kind, actually comforting me as I lost it for a few minutes. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt, just shook up a bit. What an awful day that was. I cried about it for several days.
