Road Trips & Flat Tires

I've been driving for 15 years, and in all of those 15 years I have never gotten a flat tire.  That was, until this past weekend.  With my sister, Amy, in town from Maryland and Memorial weekend coming up, Kate and I decided to take a little road trip back to Maryland.  This little road trip started with hitching a ride with Amy.  The plan was Kate and I would ride to MD with Amy, visit my grandparents, my friend, and my brother and sister-in-law, and then Kate and I would fly back to Columbus.

Seems simple, right?  Wrong.

First, Amy, Kate, and I left Columbus, OH driving to Maryland shortly after 7 am on Thursday.  15 minutes into our drive and we hit some serious traffic, like, road closed due to a terrible accident traffic.  I think we went a total of 3 miles in an hour.  When we were able to get back up to the speed limit, we had to stop so that I could feed Kate.  Shortly after we got back on the road, we heard a pop sound, realized we had no control of the car we were driving, and found out that we got a flat tire on the front left tire.  (The "no control" part was very scary.)

We pulled over to the right side of the road and starting exploring our options.  My independent and oh-so-car-savvy sister was determined and convinced that we could change this tire ourselves.  I was not as confident, but I knew we would figure it out together.  Luckily, we really didn't have to.  A very good Samaritan pulled over and changed the tire all by his lonesome which we were extremely grateful for.  That left us driving on a spare, so we then had to go to a tire place to get a new tire.

By noon, 5 hours into our 7 hour drive, we were only 1.5 hours away from Columbus.  When it was time to get back on the road again, my heart ached to simply turn around and go back home to Columbus as opposed to drive another 6 hours, but we pressed on.

We arrived in Maryland just after 7 pm.  Our 7 hour road trip took 12.  Kate was an absolute angel the entire trip.  I couldn't have been more proud of her...or more sorry for putting her through that.

Fortunately, once we finally arrived in Maryland, we saw everyone we had set out to see - my grandparents, my friend - Tamara, and my brother and sis-in-law.  It got a little hectic staying at a different house each night, but we managed, and we took Kate's very first flight back to Columbus.  Which, again, she did very well despite being sleepy and slightly restless.

It was so nice to see my wonderful family and friend, but after such an ordeal getting into town, home was a very welcome sight.

Trip to MD.