pop goes the weasel, or in this case: my tire

yes, folks, my ride home from the office today resulted in a surprise 2 hour adventure along the roadside.

just when i thought i'd started to get a handle on all the stress i've been feeling...

i headed home early from the office today because i had much work to do and wanted some peace and quiet. i was driving along 6th avenue (don't let it's name fool you, it's a 6 lane highway) when i heard a very large "POP!" My first thought was "what did i hit?" and I looked in my rear view mirror to see if any debris was lying in the road behind me, but it was not. Then I began to come to the realization that my car seemed a bit "off." It did not take me very long at all to come to the conclusion that I might very well have busted a tire on whatever it was I ran over. I quickly got to the right should of the road (thankfully I was at a point on the road where there was a decent sized dirt patch that I could pull off into, instead of cement walls that lined the rest of the road way). As I peeked out my door, with cars whizzing by, I saw that my back left tire was flat as a pancake. This was no small leak my friends, this was an instantaneous deflating of my tire. So there I was, on a warm afternoon, with a flat and no knowledge of how to change it. I'd learned it in driver's ed, my dad had taught me, and M had shown me as well, after we got married because I wanted to be one of those girls that could change a tire, but when I really needed it, I couldn't remember any of those instructions. Out came the AAA card and my cell phone. Thank goodness for AAA. About 40 mins later I was back on the road, coasting at a nice 40mph on a little weenie spare. Unfortunately, whatever I hit made a big enough hole that there's no sense in patching it. We're going to need a new tire (or possibly two depending on the wear on the tread of the tire on the opposite side - don't want to have uneven tread, ladies) I guess it's off to Costco tonight for a new tire. Just so we're clear, I'm plenty ready to be done with adventures, though I fear the next three weeks will just be one adventure after another. Maybe one of these days life will get boring again, in a good way.