What's In A Tire?

A huge sigh of relief rushes over my body like a cool, swiftly running creek on an early spring day as I come to a realization that all things school related have been completed. All finals, all papers, everything is done for this semester. After work yesterday, I came home can crashed on my bed and stayed there for over thirteen hours to celebrate.

So as promised, part three of the three-part entry is today. Going back to last Saturday when we had the RK3DE fiasco, there was a little untold story that happed before the over-dressed event. Before I was going to get dressed in my suit, I had to run by the bank before they closed to make a deposit, so I jumped into my truck and headed up Tates Creek Road to First Security Bank. There is a certain point along the trip that I take one of two directions depending on the color of a certain light – more specifically, if the light in front of Cheddars is green, I keep going until the 3rd right, but if it's red, I turn right at Cheddars. On this particular day, the light was red, so I turn into the right turn lane when I hear a “POP! Pssst, psst, psst, psst...” I think, “Surely that wasn't my tire hitting something and losing air,” but sure enough, when I got to the top of the hill, my rim was on the ground so I pulled into the 5/3rd bank. When I got out to inspect the damage, my rear right tire was completely flat and my truck's wheel was on the ground.

As you guys know, I don't have a cell phone, so I had to go into 5/3rd in my shorts and undershirt and ask to use their phone. I called up D-well and asked him to pick me up at First Security (since it was within walking distance and I still had to make a deposit.) D-well came to the rescue and picked me up, then we got ready for the RK3DE and then went to the RK3DE with MAP and Katy. Afterwards, MAP let me use her car to go get the tire from my truck and D-well came with me to teach me how to lift the truck up on the jack and remove the tire.

As we inspected the tire, we realized that a simple tire plug would not suffice, but in fact a nice chunk of the tire was missing.

As I rolled the crippled tire over to my sister's car to put it into the trunk, I heard a “clunk, clunk, clunk,” coming from inside the tire. Obviously, whatever popped my tire was still in my tire. I took it over to NTB (where D-well used to work) to put a new tire on it. Since they have an open garage, I followed my tire to the back to see what was in my tire. As the grease-monkey started to pull the tire off the wheel, he got a glance at what was in it and his face scrunched up with confusion. As he got the tire the rest of the way off, he reached in and pulled out this:

That's right, an industrial-grade box cutter punctured my tire. And the funny thing is, it still works! I even used my new $100 box-cutters to open something just the other day. Since my tires were balding and needed replacing anyways, I went ahead today and replaced the remaining three and got it all aligned and everything. I also got an oil change, so hopefully she'll be driving a little better now. I posted more pictures of the flat tire fiasco if you want to see them.

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