550Doug
Member
- Location
- Southern Ontario
This reminds me of the time I had a flat in early morning rush hour on a 6 lane highway at a basket weave. The off ramp I needed was off the left-most lane and of course it was fast traffic. My left rear tire blew on the off ramp where there was very minimal shoulder. I pulled off to the left side as far as I could so I could just barely open my door. Of course it was the hottest day in July and I believe the temperature was in the mid 90 degrees at 7:30 am in the late 1980's (before cell phones). I managed to get the jack out but as I was jacking up the car, the jack was sinking into the hot asphalt but luckily I found a small piece of plywood in the trunk to go under the jack and that helped. What a gooey mess of hot asphalt sticking to the wood and jack AND the flat tire. But only the flat side of the tire was gooey.
I found an old blanket in the trunk and wrapped the tire in the blanket and stood at the side of the road and put out my thumb. It wasn't long before someone took pity on me and stopped to pick me up. It was a dear older lady whose heart was stronger than her fears about hitch hikers.
We had a good chat and she dropped me off at my work because, ( I still cannot believe this) she worked across the road. In a city of over a million people what are the odds of that?
So my morning of bad luck had a silver lining.
Once at work I phoned a buddy for help and I managed to get a new tire onto the rim, replaced on my car that was still crippled on the off ramp, but at 2pm the traffic was much better. When I drove off, I had a thump thump thump from the front left tire as it had also collected some hot asphalt.