What actually happened is that I got on the road ahead of schedule (seriously folks, this never happens. I should have known something was up!), got on the highway, went about 20 miles and then....
I heard a strange noise. And felt a strange rumbling. And got a strange feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I pulled over immediately (thank god there was no traffic!) and had a seriously flat tire. Fortunately, a really nice guy also pulled over- he told me later that he smelled something odd, looked around and saw my flat tire and also that I was a woman and might not know what to do (I was still in panic mode when he said this, so was unable to get offended). He helped me change my tire, and I called my husband and the dentist to tell them of my predicament.
The interesting part to this story (you see, it's not just "I had a flat tire, boo"), is that it's beyond a flat tire. It's a flatty-flatty-flat-flat tire. Or possibly an exploded tire. I have never seen a tire like this.
All those holes go through all the layers of the tire, into the inner air space. I'm pretty sure there are pieces of my tire still on the highway somewhere in southern MA.
The irony here is that I splurged on these tires. I went and got the 80K mile Michelins, thinking that if I got the best ones, I'd have them for the rest of the time I had the car. I've only had them for 35K miles- and on the Michelin website, they say this line of tire is under warranty for up to 50K miles (it's iffy whether I qualify because of when I bought my tires). But I'm thinking this sort of damage isn't exactly normal, right?
The other bit of irony is that I took my car today instead of Clint's newer car because his car has a little tire issue that we wanted to figure out before we took it back on the highway. Lovely.
And I have to reschedule the dentist appointment for another day. Le sigh.
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