So I have a tire with a “slow leak” which seems to be mechanic speak for “you can’t actually hear a cartoony sssssss, but you can imagine it pretty well” or possibly “well, you can’t really watch it deflating.”
So that was a fun white-knuckle drive home (after waiting two hours for roadside assistance to pump it up enough).
Have I mentioned my bridge thing? So I have a thing about bridges. Especially over water, tho I’m terribly keen on overpasses crossing other highways. Especially bridges waaay high over water. I blame Cincy and the bridges to cross from Kentucky over the Ohio River into Cincy. The I75 one is the worst. You’re surrounded by hyper-aggressive maniacs who damned well won’t slow down more than 15 miles over the limit (or 80 mph, whichever is greater) passing you than swerving back in front of you in the 2/3 car length space that’s the best you can maintain between yourself and the next car because they (the speed maniacs) just realized they need the right lane to exit as soon as the bridge touches land which is in just under 1/8 mile. The next car up also realizes he must exit in approximately 1/12 mile but needs one of the two left lanes. Everyone in the lane next to (second from the right) who couldn’t believe their luck with other cars switching right or left just realized that their lane actually divides abruptly to downtown (blocked for construction which began in 1982) or merge to the right (the lane you — and now about two dozens other vehicles that weren’t there just seconds ago — are in). Far below you is a river that may not have burned like Lake Erie did way back when, but still isn’t healthy to drink, swim in, or allow to touch your skin.
You’ll have just long enough to really panic before you hit the water, sink, and die. If you go over, that is.
So my thing about bridges is: there’s no shoulder. There’s no evasion options if one of the other drivers loses control or just doesn’t notice you’re already occupying this bit of the road thankyouverymuch. It’s a control issue because I have none over other drivers, and a trust issue because I do not trust other drivers.
The Kentucky River is between my home and my job. I either have to cross it or detour a couple of hours out of my way down to Tennessee and back up. The river is a bit closer to home than work. So I had driven about forty miles on the tire with the very fast slow leak when I got to the steep and curvy descent to the bridge. And it stormed off and on all day so the roads were very slick.
spoiler: I lived.
On the ascent up the far side I passed a minivan pulling back onto the highway from the shoulder. It’s emergency blinkers were on. I thought, “you & me both, dude” and gave hime space. He picked up speed, passed me, and turned off his blinkers. Two semis started to pass me, the one in front slowed and put on his emergency blinkers, the other semi swerved around it then passed me.
A few miles on, the minivan abruptly veered back onto the shoulder and put on its emergency blinkers again.
Which seemed to parallel the allergy-based cough/choke/sneeze rhythm two of my coworkers and I had going on in the back office for a bit this afternoon. We sounded like a plague hospital choir in a Monty Python sketch. Or possibly Blackadder.
I need to get the tire fixed before I drive another sixty miles (I exaggerate, it’s only fifty-six). I’m sure the tire will be nearly flat again by morning, so I’ll have to get roadside assistance out to put on the spare before I can drive to any garage. Since I’ll be on a fully-inflated (tho only half-sized) spare, I’m going to the garage in Lexington where I bought the tires this past fall. So I’ll be very late to work.
And I have all night to work up a full panic attack over it all. At least I’m not looking down into nasty brown sludge/water and contemplating my imminent death.
Happy hump day, y’all.
p.s. There’s been expanding construction for awhile on I64, more in my way on the way home than going to work. (Except the morning a crew was filling in potholes on both west-bound lanes at the same time. But that was a separate project.) They added some fun new barriers and signs and hokey-pokerie this week. I got pics tonight, because what the hell, I thought I was going to die anyway.
So first there’s a stop sign as soon as you come down the on ramp. At least one lane will be blocked (it varies), so you have to figure out which lanes you can use and then, from a full stop, insert yourself into the 70+ mph traffic.
Because a couple of signs will stop you from changing lanes when the barrels and the hard drop onto the unpaved middle lane didn’t.
I’m not saying people won’t try to use the unpaved lane that’s lower than the others. I’m saying signs, and even the barrels, won’t stop the really determined.
Comments