Saturday. Oy.
Monday, September 30, 2013 at 02:45PM ...so, Saturday. We were driving on over Berthoud Pass when...BAM!
There was a rock in the road (that looked like a piece of snow/ice). Like the Titanic, in retrospect, we should have hit it head on...but swerved to try to miss it, whereby it gouged the side of the tire beyond repair. Awesome. Flat, flat tire:
;)
On the plus side, very thankful that we were close enough to the pass (elevation 11,307 feet) to get to the parking lot area there. (Trying to change a tire on the edge of the switchbacks would have been dangerous and icky.) Also thankful that we had the two vehicles so that we could shuffle luggage and such around without having to set it on the snow/slush (yes, it had snowed the day/night before and was quite chilly despite the sunshine).
Anyhow, we finally got the spare tire out from under the van (having had to unload our fairly packed van in the first place to get to the dealio that loosened said spare tire) only to discover that the spare was also flat (fortunately just low, not damaged...but too low to drive on). Fun times.
So. John & Nathan took both the spare and the flat tires in the rental car and drove down the mountain to find help. Meanwhile, Nancy and I took the boys to the restroom building for a bit over an hour while we waited. Oh, and it was lunch time, so folks were getting hungry. Still...feeling pretty fortunate that the restroom building was there so we could sit in the warmth and play games and eat some of the fruit and the marshmallows that we had in the van. (Lunch/snack of champions, eh? lol)
John & Nathan weren't able to find a replacement tire so just filled up the spare and brought it back...whereupon we put it on, reloaded and drove down the mountain at low speeds. We stopped in Evergreen to find a tire (at the second place we looked) and eat a late lunch before seeing John & Nancy off to the airport (a bit behind schedule). We then killed time at Walmart waiting for our tire before finally getting back on the road. Sigh.
From there, we thankfully remembered that we'd left Nathan's car in Longmont, so headed home by way of Boulder (and the Apple store) and Longmont. We finally made it home about 3-4 hours (and the cost of a tire) later than anticipated. Whew. Still...feeling pretty fortunate for how it went down. :)
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