Catastrophe Averted, but Repercussions Loom

Yesterday was a white-knuckled, extremely stressful day on Mike’s Road Trip. I was driving from Bozeman, MT to Spokane, WA with my good friend Rhonda.  The weather was cold and inclement at times and the road conditions were treacherous.  I learned a valuable lesson this day…NEVER use your cruise control on sketchy road conditions.  While we were traveling on a particular stretch of I-90 just west of Missoula, I had the cruise set at 65mph and the roads looked to be pretty clear.  Rhonda was a bit concerned with my speed as she thought the road looked of solid ice.  A fair assumption given the temperature was just above 0.

Moments later as we were cruising up an incline; my overdrive kicked-in and spun us out of control, slamming us into the median.  For a moment we were heading straight for the concrete barrier, but at the last second the truck straighten out and we basically side swiped it with great force.  I pulled the truck over to inspect the damage both to the truck as well as to Rhonda and I.  Thankfully , neither of us were injured in the least.  As I got out of the truck to inspect the damage, I fully expected the entire drivers-side to be an utter mess.  To my complete amazement, there was nothing more than a minor scratch on the body of the truck.  The wheels of the truck however were another story entirely…one was so mangled that I couldn’t believe that air was still being contained within the tire.   Unfortunately, the drama had just begun…

The evening before our departure I got a flat tire, so I put the spare on and went to look for a “Discount Tire,” the place in which my tires were purchased and have road hazard warranties through.  To my dismay I learned that Discount Tire does not have a single location in Montana, the closest one was in Coeur d’Alene, ID…the direction we’d be traveling, but some 300 miles away.  I thought that perhaps I would just risk not having a spare and attempt to make it to Discount…thankfully I took the prudent route, as you will soon learn.

We could not believe how busy every single tire store was in Bozeman, anywhere from 2-6 hour wait.  It seemed everyone and their mother needed tires or tire repairs this day.  I finally got someone to just put air in my tire, the one that went flat the day before to see if it was fixable.  Come to find out they did not discover a thing wrong with it.  My suspicion is that the tire became unseated from the wheel and thus lost its air pressure.  In any event, this was good news as we now had a spare tire, which was a saving grace.

After the accident we found an exit in which we could more closely inspect the damage to the tires and wheels.  Both wheels were pretty chewed up, one much more than the other.  I knew neither was safe to drive on, but we only had one spare and were basically in the middle of nowhere.  We had 140 miles or so to Couer d’Alene and had no choice but to just take it slow and easy.  I changed out the really bad tire/wheel with the questionable spare…as I did so, I noticed it was low on air, only 25lbs.  We stopped at this small town with a gas station, but the air pressure did not seem to be any more than what I had in the tire, as a matter of fact, while trying to fill the tire with air I ended up losing another 5lbs of tire pressure.  Not good.

After several hours of slow driving, we finally made it to Discount Tire just before they were to close…apparently 97 (literally) other folks had the same idea…there was a 7-8 hour wait.  Of course this was not going to work, so we continued on to Spokane, just hoping our luck would not run out.

We did end up making it just fine, but not without the loss of at least one of our 9-lives.  After all of the stress of the day, it was really nice to have our expectations exceedingly surpassed by the quality of our hotel (The Davenport Hotel – Spokane) and the lovely suite they put us in on the 12^th floor overlooking the city.

Unfortunately it looks like we’ll be spending a fair amount of our time here in Spokane dealing with tires and wheels. If anyone knows anyone at Discount Tire corporate, perhaps you could propose they sponsor Mike’s Road Trip as this expenditure is going to be a tough one for the cash-strapped nomad.