Last night, while I was driving home from the theater, when I was a couple of miles from home, I noticed a thumping noise that seemed to be coming from my left front tire. I pulled over, and the tire was not flat. But something was obviously wrong.
So I kept driving, very slowly now, because the street I was on was going to take me to our regular auto mechanic's garage. And then, as I turned off the road toward the garage, the thumping stopped, but a distinct hissing sound began.
I remember this happened to me once before. Thumping followed by hissing. The thumping is the warning sign that something has gone wrong with your steel belted radial tires. The hissing is the warning sign that air is leaving the tires right now.
Anyway, after the bad luck of the tires, I had the great good luck to pull into the mechanics' parking lot while the tire was still hissing its air out. At this point, I was only a mile from home. So I took an envelope, wrote an an explanatory note, put the car key in the envelope, put the envelope through the mechanics' mail slot... and walked home.
Yes, I could have changed the tire, put the spare on, myself. But now I don't have to.
This was almost as "lucky" as the time my rented bicycle flatted out near a bike shop on a trail that connects Pennsylvania & Maryland. That time the culprit was a thorn that had punctured the tire.
Your tires need air
to get you there.
If they're missing that,
your stranded flat.
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