...and BOOM goes the tire.

So, yesterday was kind of an interesting day all around.

It started when we went out to breakfast at Nick's down in south Norwood. We were having a great breakfast when all of a sudden a parade broke out; I kid you not. Without warning, we saw fire trucks, police cars and the Colonial Boys coming down the street. Turns out that it was time for the annual Norwood Little League Parade. So, team after team started marching, holding their team banners (sidebar: I don't think I would have wanted to play for the Marlins in little league. Yeah, the major league team isn't so bad but the uniforms are not a good color. And, let's face it, that's all you care about in little league). It was one of those special "for the parents" parades that had more people marching in it than watching it.

After that it was down to Wareham to open up the cottage for the summer. It was a successful trip as everyone seemed to leave the place alone over the winter and everything was as it should be. We measured out for the new deck that we'll be starting to build soon enough and turned on the water, with only one minor leak that had to be dealt with. Once again, I was reminded that my grandfather was a slight man, as I had to go under the house to turn the water on. That is a tight squeeze and he would do it every summer. Overall, it was about as good as could be expected for a house that had been empty for 7 months.

Then the day got screwy. On the way down my dad's truck had started making a weird vibrating noise. It didn't start until we were going over route 24 and got worse as we approached Wareham. After stopping to check it out we could see the tire on the passenger side had a strange wear pattern on the outer rim. I'm no mechanic, but I've never seen a tire go so bad, so fast. So, we decided that it would be much safer to take the back roads home to Norwood. We made it all the way to Bridgewater when BOOM. The steel belts of the tire had shredded and the tread had come off, with enough force that it actually ripped the plastic wheel well right off the truck and sent it flying. We were lucky in that we had enough room to pull over and also that the inner tire hadn't burst so the car didn't go as tilted as it could have. And hey, I had never seen what tire tread is made of, so I learned something.

There is nothing worse than changing a tire. It's just a pain in the ass and on a narrow two-lane road with cars whizzing by at 50 miles an hour it's even less fun (by the way, screw you to the 200 hundred people who just flew on by, but thanks to the one car of old ladies who asked if we needed to call anyone). Fortunately, for all the faults of my dad's truck, the jack system isn't one of them. It was easier to change this thing on the side of the road than it was when I had a flat on my truck in my freakin' driveway, only because all the tools were there (the tire iron in my truck turned out to be the wrong size). Also, surprisingly, he had a great spare - a brand-new tire that had air in it. So, after some time on the side of the road in Bridgewater, we could continue on our adventure home.

The rest of the trip to Kurt's garage was spent patting ourselves on the back about how smart we were to go the back roads home and also we kept pointing out all the worse spots along the drive that we could have blown the tire. I did begin to question my cellphone-free lifestyle, because if I had been driving alone that would have not been good. But, we did pass about 4 golf courses that I now feel like I need to check out, so bonus points for that (now I just need to remember how to get back to them). It wasn't what I would call a fun day, but it at least it was interesting.