A flat tire in Salt Lake

On Saturday as we were headed to Gordon and Murriel’s to sleep (they were away in South Carolina visiting Vickey’s sister, Rachel, and Kevin, but they let us sleep at their place while were in Salt Lake because my parents and sister’s family were occupying all of Brian’s spare rooms), just before we entered the freeway, a car pulled up next to us and kept honking and waving at us. I finally rolled down my window and they told me my back tire was flat.

I was able to steer to the right side of the road and pull off on the feeder road. Sure enough, the back driver’s side tire was completely flat. The rim was riding on a doubled-over tire. And I hadn’t even felt it until after the other car’s passengers told us it was flat.

I called our insurance emergency roadside assistance number and just about an hour later we had the spare on the tire and were ready to go.


Eliana asked me why I didn’t change the tire. Once I saw the equipment the guy had who came from the insurance call I was easily justified. If I drove around with the right tools, it would be a piece of cake. And if no one else could help I certainly could do it. But when your insurance takes care of it, why not?

At any rate, we left Brian’s home around 7 p.m. and got to the Snows in Holladay after 9:30 p.m. The flat tire set us back an hour plus.

Then the problem became finding a tire shop open on Sunday, Mother’s Day. It took me a couple hours to find one that was open and had the right size tire for our car. Our tire was cracked along the tread, so there was no fixing it.

We ended up paying more than expected for a spare, but the way we look at, now we’ve got one new tire and when it comes time to replace all the tires, we’ll only need to buy three more. Then the spare can go back under the car.

We could have risked it and drove to Vegas Sunday without a spare, but Vickey had a close call Saturday afternoon and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a teenage driver who sped right through a stop sign (I was at my brother’s with the kids). So we weren’t certain if that could have caused the flat and/or if another one may happen.

Between the flat and Vickey’s near accident, we had two nearly disastrous auto incidents last Saturday. We’re grateful no one was injured and we were able to fix the situation without too much inconvenience.

We are sorry though that we didn’t get to enjoy a Mother’s Day barbeque with the Archambaults and Snows (my dad’s sister and her family, and Vickey’s brother and his family) in St. George. We had to drive straight through to Vegas in order to pick-up Tank from our friend’s home before it got too late.

For the first time, the Swans watched Tank while we were out of town. He’s our neighbor (they live in the subdivision just to the north of us) and home teacher, and went above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks, guys!

Tank actually did better at the Swans than he has ever done at the kennel or the dog sitter’s. The last two times he was at the dog sitters he “attacked” a little dog, so he was uninvited. We don’t know what happened, but he was quarantined there and she told us she couldn’t have him back and endanger the other dogs.

Luckily we haven’t ever seen Tank attack anyone or another dog. We’ve seen him attacked by another dog (a neighbor’s rottweiler), but that’s another story. I’m not saying he’s not capable of it. Just that he hasn’t done that around our family. We do believe however that if a stranger came in our home unannounced he or she would have a difficult time getting away from Tank.

Tank and Rascal, the Swan’s dog, seemed to get along fine as long as they weren’t fighting over doggie treats.

Here’s a photo of Tank from a recent camping and hiking outing. He was so excited, winded and exhausted. Look at that long tongue.