Blasted Tire

This was our tire after a very scary experience. We went to SLC with some friends for Mike's birthday and a couple minutes after getting on the freeway to come home the car started shaking and swerving almost uncontrollably.

• Fortunately Mike was able to pull to the shoulder (we had been in the carpool lane so it was the left shoulder) without banging my sports car against the median and him and Pete got out to assess the damage.

• Unfortunately I had studded snow tires on the car which are kind of pricey.

• Fortunately it didn't affect any of the other 3 tires, as far as we can tell.

• Unfortunately this was about 2 months ago so it was freezing and very windy, plus we had gotten all dressed up for dinner so Rachel and I were wearing skirts and opted to stay inside the car.

• Fortunately my car has a mid-size donut in the trunk and basic tire changing equipment.

• Unfortunately the lugnuts had been professionally air-pressurized and were almost impossible to get loose.

• Fortunately just then a highway patrolman drove by, saw our plight, and came to help us with his much better equipment.

So, since the entire episode took about 20 minutes and there were more fortunates than unfortunates, I consider the whole thing as going much, much better than it could have.

The aftermath, however. . .

Don't work with Firestone. I've never had a good experience there but they had the cheapest snow tires so we bought from them and they were kind of jerks about the tire when we took it in to them to replace, since it was 2 days after the 30 day warranty and they refused to replace it for free even though they couldn't find any evidence in the tire of us hitting anything to cause the blow-out.