Good luck in bad

I had quite the adventure today, and while the initial incident was bad luck, I truly feel like I was very lucky with how it all worked out.

I had taken the kids to the movies this morning, and let the bigs each invite a friend. We'd dropped M's friend off after the movie, and were headed back to our house.

We passed under a phone line that was being hoisted up for repair. We made a couple jokes about the line being dropped on our car. I heard an odd clanging noise from the front driver's side of the car, and almost immediately after that, my low tire pressure gauge light came on. Uh oh. Within a couple seconds, my front driver's tire was totally flat. (Note to self: stop worrying about inadvertently driving on a flat tire. You WILL know if the tire is flat)

This is where the good luck came in. We were right in front of the Les Schwab Tire Center in Clinton when my tire went flat. I was able to pull in there, and not have to drive on my flat for more than a couple seconds. They were exactly like the commercials. They literally ran to my car, found out what was going on, and were happy to put my spare on for me at no charge. I told them that my husband was in charge or tire purchases for our family, and that he has such specific requirements for tires that I just go along with whatever he wants, so even though the tire was destroyed, I couldn't purchase a tire at that time. But, I was in and out of Les Schwab within about 20 minutes with excellent service. I can't recommend that shop enough.

The second piece of luck was this: directly ahead of us was a Qwest supervisor. He had his driver's rear tire destroyed, and the damage was identical, except that his was on the tread, and mine was on the side wall. He was on the phone with various staff members trying to figure out if Qwest was somehow responsible. The lineman had done a visual search for parts in the road, but hadn't seen anything. It was generally agreed that the damage done to our tires looked like it came from a "j hook" (whatever that is).

I feel so lucky that when this happened, I was close to someplace that could put the spare on for me. I'm perfectly capable of putting on a spare, but it's a HUGE pain. Secondly, I always would've questioned and wondered if it'd been related to Qwest, but would've been really nervous about putting in a claim. Of course, I figure my husband probably would've anyway, but it's really nice to see Qwest being a really great, responsible company, and wanting to make it right without threat or hassle. Well, maybe. We don't have a check in the mail yet or anything, but the supervisor was really great and professional when we spoke to him.

It's a bit sad that we're going to have to go buy FOUR new tires right now though. We'd planned to buy a back seat and roll cage for our side by side, but I guess having matching tires is more important.