Blown Tyre in a Morning Rush Hour

I had driven about two hours to visit my mother after work Friday
and spent the entire weekend indoors being plumped up…like I need
plumping. It had just come naturally that I would leave Monday morning
and go straight to work rather than scramble to leave Sunday before it
got too dark. Luckily, I’m rounding at a hospital that is not too busy
and nothing would be amiss if I started my day at 9am instead of 8am.

It is a rainy day. 6:30am rush hour traffic to boot. But I’m in no
rush. I finally get out of the gnarl towards the city and find myself
on the highway. I expect smooth sailing henceforth with the city behind me. It’s still raining,
just not as hard. My dear Corolla begins to vibrate as if I’m driving over grates.
I’m not disturbed. This area of the highway is particularly rough. My
dashboard GPS machine usually inches forward around these parts and I’m
convinced that this is where I had lost my hubcap last winter.
 

The vibrating though gets worse over the next several minutes and now I’m positively rumbling. I begin to feel not quite in
control of my car. I think to myself, “I know I should have taken my car
back to the shop. Didn’t they say the last time that my suspension was
off, and I deferred to act upon it as I needed them to fix my rattling
brake drums?” I started to question when I would have the time to go to
the car shop. The one I used was near my current hospital but this was
my last day there for the foreseeable future. Of course, that’s not saying much because I get my schedule as piecemeal courtesy of the toxic boss.  I was to switch over to
the other hospital tomorrow. As I started to remind myself that it had
been forecasted to become bitterly cold this week and that I needed my
winter tyre changeover I began to see black parts fly up from under my
car. My poor Corolla was groaning, telling me no more.

Don’t ask me how but I safely and quickly made it across three
lanes to the right shoulder. I was engulfed in the smell of burnt
rubber. That smell that took me back to the dark rainy highway of a roadtrip to be forgotten.

I’m parked now. My wits have been collected. I have two arms, two
legs, and glasses on my face. The narrator of the audiobook I am
listening to is recounting her escape from the slave traders. It’s been a captivating listen, but I
don’t have time for that right now. Silence. I need utter
and complete silence. It’s raining. Cars are zooming by. And I smell
burnt rubber. I’m obviously not getting to work anytime soon.  I put my flashers on. I get out. Oh calamity! My driver
side tyre is shredded to bits. Calamity upon calamity! I sit back inside
the car afraid that I will be side-swiped by a passing car. I start the
engine and inch my car closer to the median and further away from the
zooming cars. I get out again and survey the damage. Just one tyre is in
shreds. Good! The others including the one missing it’s hubcab are in place.
“Serves you right”, I think. “Next time you will learn to check your
tyre pressures”, I chide myself.
 

I’m seated in my car trying to figure out what next to do. Do I have
AAA? No, it’s been years since I paid for that. Does anyone in my family
have AAA? Do I want my family to know at this time that I’m stranded on
the shoulder of a busy highway? I can just imagine my mother. Frantic!
Worried! Blaming me for one thing or another for this calamity. I can see her in my rearview mirror rushing
towards me in her minivan with her auto mechanic, a close
friend…except her van is at the car shop with said auto mechanic. “No! Not a good idea. Don’t I
have roadside assistance with my insurance? With my fancy credit card?
Wait, I have a cell phone. I will Google what to do!”
 

I get out once again to examine the tyre. No metal damage. Just a
shredded tyre. I gather that I could just change the tyre. I have a spare after all. Don’t I? I check. Yes, there’s a spare and it is not flat. I think about my sister M’sa. I believe she knows how to change out a tyre. I unfortunately do not. I ask myself, is today the day I’m going to learn how to change out a tyre? Though I have convinced myself that I’m ok, I know that I’m still too flustered to figure out what to do. Not to mention the cold. The rain. The cold rain in fact. And the zooming cars. Aren’t I a damsel in distress? Where is my knight in shining armour? My good Samaritan? Damn Monday morning!

I call my insurance for roadside assistance for a tyre change. They locate me with my permission using my cell phone coordinates. But they can’t come to me because my location is too dangerous. They suggest I look around for an emergency number to get towed to somewhere safer and then call them back for the tyre change. I see no emergency number.

“911, what is your emergency?”, the dispatcher says on the other end of the line just like they do on Dateline and 20/20. I have never called 911 before. I thought you weren’t able to from a mobile. “I’m disabled in my car on the turnpike, and I was wondering if I could get a tow”, I ask. I get put through to two other people before I’m told it will take at least a half hour. That’s not bad. I make myself comfortable. I text the physician that I’m partnered with that I have a slight emergency. Just an FYI. I will be late. And then, I go back to listening to my novel.

Thirty minutes later, I look at the time. Any moment now, I should be arriving at work. My mother would be expecting a call confirming my safe arrival.  Do I call now and lie that I have arrived? No, that’s only asking for bad karma. Do I call now and let her know that I have been delayed? No. That will trigger too many questions. Though I now have a semblance of a plan, I am still sitting in a disabled car on the shoulder of the highway. No!

Luckily, the tow truck comes just as promised. The lanky older gentleman parks in front of me, and walks to my car. I get out to meet him. He looks at my tyre then at my face. He puts his arms on his hips and says “So you were driving on a flat tyre, huh”.  I say “Yeah, I guess, I don’t know, it just turned to shreds on me. Wait, no I didn’t purposefully drive on a flat tyre”. “Do you have Triple A? You should have Triple A”, he says fatherly. “What do you want to do here?” he asks. “Well, I called to get a tow, but if you can change it that would be nice” I reply. He fetches the spare from the boot, makes me get back into the car, and sets about changing the tyre. Fifteen minutes later or so, he’s done. Sixty dollars is my first expenditure for the day. As I wait for him to run my credit card, I think to myself, “Well that was easy”. None of the hassle my family had on an Nzema road in Ghana.

When the tow truck operator returns with my credit card, I ask how far I can expect to drive on the spare. I tell him I still have an hour at least to go on the highway. He chuckles. “You can go”, he says, “just don’t go past fifty”. “These tyres aren’t designed to go faster than fifty”. “So I can go all the way to my destination?” I ask again. “Sure”, he says as he walks away, “just as long as you don’t have another flat tyre”, he says chuckling.

I wasn’t amused but I knew I was fine and thankful for it. My flashers still on, I merged into traffic and stayed in the right lane for the next hour or so, passing the exit for the hospital and driving straight home. I got my winter tyres and drove to the mechanic near the hospital to have them switch out all my tyres, and while they were at it, do an oil change as well. Ninety dollars! Ka-ching!

My colleague came to pick me up from the mechanic and dropped me back at the end of the day. He had done a few of the consults, so I didn’t have too much work waiting for me. Thank goodness!!!