Here I am at John's place in Sacramento. What was going to be a 6 hour drive turned out to be more than eight hours. Everything was going smooth until I managed to run over a big chunk of truck tire that was in the road around 100 miles from John's place. I couldn't believe that it happened because it didn't feel that intense. Once I ran over the giant obstacle I thought all was fine. Then in a few seconds I starting to hear something that sounded like a rumble strip on the side of the road. Right away I pulled the car over for inspection only to find the right rear tire had gone completely flat. It took some time for me to extract the tiny space saver spare, and figure out where the jack could be properly located. Being on Interstate 5 was quite intimidating as I pulled the spare out from under the car. At least the flat was on the side facing away from the freeway.
With the tire located the next step was to get the spare fully inflated at the nearest gas station. John informed me that I should have used my bicycle tire pump. Needless to say I wasn't thinking that well with the stress of the situation. Fortunately two gas stations were only a couple miles down the road. Of course neither sold tires. So after asking around I found a couple of options. Eventually I found a tire store that had a slightly used rubber band that would fit my little machine. The place was in Patterson city which was on side roads about 30 minutes away. I had one hour to get there before they closed.
Lucky for me I was able to get there with plenty of time to spare. The tire was a beauty of a Goodyear. Better than I could have ever expected for $45. The whole adventure added two hours to my trip. It was an excellent learning experience for someone that didn't have a smartphone, or a AAA card. What I found was you can rely on others to help you, and there are a whole lot of nice people in these lest traveled areas. Most of all I learned that Interstate 5 is a battle field. So keep your eyes pealed if you ever wander around these parts. Some dead tire my come back to life, and bite a whole in your perfectly good tread.
John and his friend Deb were so gracious to provide me with a place to stay last night. It really felt good to be safe at my destination for the day with a yummy meal of bbq'd chicken, salad, and baked potato to revive me. We stayed up late for some bicycle chit chat. The next morning we were on our way to Battle Mountain after loading all of John's goods. Please, no more disasters!