Sunshine-y days are gone

Me:  (said while merging onto 28 southbound near Creighton) “Huh.  That’s strange.  The car feels a little funny this morning.”  (noticing the rough wind)  “Must be just the wind.”
Jenny:  “Yeah, that wind is really strong.”
Me:  “Huh.  I seem to be having some trouble maintaining speed.”
Car:  FWOMP
Me:  “Uh…”
Car:  THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA
Car:  I’m now going to make it hard for you to drive straight, turn at all, accelerate, decelerate, and generally do anything involved with making me move. 
Me:  “Hang onto your stuff for a minute, Jenny.” 

My left rear tire was attacked by a rivet at some point.  I didn’t notice if the tire was low this morning, and it was fine driving around home and through Creighton, but coming up the hill after Creighton, I started to notice some odd behavior.  Right after passing the Mills Mall, I got the FWOMP sound.  A flat tire doesn’t last long at 55MPH.  Apparently, the tire had become low enough that the inside sidewall rubbed against something (or maybe just rubbed against the pavement due to the tire being flat), and the FWOMP sound was the sidewall giving-out, leaving us with a very floppy tire.  As soon as I heard that (immediately followed by the THUMPA THUMPA), I indicated my intention to get off the road, and did so as smoothly as possible.  Fortunately, we were near the Springdale exit on 28, so there was a nice, large berm off of the exit that would keep us mostly out of any fast-moving traffic. 

Jenny and I debated for a few minutes about putting our AAA membership to use.  At rush hour, though, I figured that it would take a little while for them to get anyone there, and I’m certainly not averse to changing tires, so I decided to just do it myself.  I grabbed the manual to find the lift points and make sure that I was doing anything else that I needed to do.  It was a good thing I looked at that, too, as the Subie is AWD.  Since the spare is not a full-size tire, AWD should be disabled to avoid having it trying to compensate for what looks like uneven traction.  There’s a slot in the fuse box that can be filled by any spare fuse to disable AWD and force the car into FWD mode.  I went around back and opened-up the spare tire and jack compartments, and got out all of the gear.  I noticed immediately that the car was missing a lug wrench.  This was going to make this change a little difficult.  I always carried a spare tire iron with me, though, because the ones that come with most cars are crap.  I went to grab it, then realize that I had given it to someone I was helping who had a flat tire about a year ago or so.  ARGH. 

Back into the car we go, and Jenny calls AAA.  About 40 minutes later, a guy who looks remarkably like me, beard and all, shows up to change the tire.  I couldn’t help but explain that I just didn’t have a tire iron.  Argh. 

Ten minutes later, and we’re on our way on the doughnut.  I need to call our local garage today to see if they can do a tire change for us tomorrow. 

Sad day.

jonathan