Road Hazards

I had two errands to run this morning and called Mikayla to ask if she wanted to get out of the house and come with me.  She did, so I went over and picked her up.  I needed to go to the bishop's storehouse to check things out, and I needed to go to Costco.  We headed up University Avenue, and as we drove under 800 North in Orem, we heard an unusual clunk-ish noise.  Mikayla said, "What was that?!"  

"I think some snow or something dropped off the back tire," I replied.

"No," she said. "I think you hit something."

I didn't drive 20 more yards before it was apparent that I had hit something and I had a flat tire.  Unfortunately, this was the first day we've had any really significant snowfall, and boy, of boy, was it falling.  I pulled off the road into a parking lot and we got out to inspect the damage.  Not only did I hit something, I really hit something.  As is evident from the picture, whatever it was gouged a huge hole in the side of the tire.  It was flat to the rim.  

 

I called Kent to tell him what had happened and he asked if he should come and help us.  I told him I thought I could handle it, Mikayla and I retrieved the spare tire and tools from the back of the car, and I got to work changing it.  I couldn't figure out where to put the jack, but after consulting the owner's manual, we found where I should place the jack and I started lifting the car.  It wasn't going super well and I told Mikayla she should probably call Kent to come help us after all.  He was already on his way when she called.  He came to be my hero rescuer!  

Part-way through the change, with the car jacked up and Kent trying to get lug nuts on, Cora, who was climbing around freely in the car, climbed over the gear shift and knocked the car into neutral.  It rolled off the jack and sent it forward towards a concrete barrier, but stopped before doing any damage to car.  Luckily, Kent was also out of the way, so it did no damage to him either.  Brick was very keen on getting out of the car to see what we were doing, but it was so wet  and snowy, we didn't want him to come out.  Our conciliation was that he and Cora could just be in the car, not in their car seats, so they could watch out the window.  After this minor mishap, we strapped them back in.

We got the tire changed, Kent loaded it up to take it away, and Mikayla and I loaded up, too.  Unfortunately, we had lost too much time dealing with tire in the snow that we didn't have time to go to the bishop's storehouse.  We did go to Costco, however, and have a fun story to tell about our puncture.