"Pushing Air Down" on the Trans Canada Highway

It's been a full week, the first week of my Summer Sabbatical.

We left Brier, Second Wind in tow, last Thursday, July 2, at about 11am, a little later than we had planned. The drive across Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were without incident, and I found it remarkable how much the Michigan upper peninsula looked like the coast of Maine. (I had considered waking up Stephanie and saying, "Look, Honey. We made it!")

On Day Three of this road trip, we crossed into Ontario with the goal of making it past Montreal before stopping to rest. But it was not to be.

About halfway to Montreal, traffic on the Trans Canada Highway started to slow down. As I looked into my rear view mirror to verify that the traffic behind me was also slowing down, I noticed that the boat trailer was rocking. What I had thought was bumpy pavement was this rocking trailer. I could feel it in the steering wheel. A check in my right side mirror confirmed: tire failure.

I pulled off onto the gravel shoulder immediately. Traffic continued past at about 40 km/h, then slowed to a stop. A tractor-trailer rig came in fast and hit the brakes hard, just missing the stopped cars by swerving into the oncoming traffic lane, which was empty. We had watched a near disaster that would have left several cars in a major pileup.

I got out the tire iron and began the task of swapping the right trailer tire with the spare. I wanted to get done quickly and not be around for another possible pileup. But "quickly" escaped me. The lug nuts were well-rusted on the wheel lugs. I could turn them, but only very slowly with great effort. The midday sun made that effort all the more difficult.

Then it happened again. Another big truck came screeching to a halt after a near miss with the stalled traffic.

I had to do something. How could I get these drivers to slow down for the imminent danger? I grabbed an orange distress flag from the boat and walked 50 yards up the shoulder, then waved it while pointing toward the stalled traffic. Sometimes it seemed to have the desired effect. Other times people started to pull over to help me (bless their hearts), so I dropped the flag and started "pushing air down" and pointing toward the stalled traffic. That seemed to be more effective. There was still some hard braking, but no more of the near misses.

But my trailer tire was NOT getting changed. Stephanie came out to help, but she could barely budge the lug nuts. We swapped places. She "pushed air down" while I slowly got the lug nuts off. After what seemed like an hour of sweating with the tire iron, I started to mount the spare. To ease the rusty nut problem, I greased the lugs with the same grease I use for the trailer wheel bearings. They went on more smoothly, but not quite as easily as they ought. Still, I managed to get the spare tire on, mounted the failed tire in it's place, and cleaned up my hands while Stephanie got into the truck.

By the time I got into the truck, the stalled traffic seemed to have disappeared, so I wasted no time in signalling my entrance back onto the highway and getting up to speed. We had lost a couple of hours, and now I was pulling a trailer with no spare tire. My cell phone wouldn't work in Canada, and I wasn't even sure if my AAA road service was available. I wanted to get that failed tire fixed first. Getting past Montreal before resting would be a good thing, but it was now unlikely.

This kind of cross-country tire failure episode was not new to me. In fact, it has happened on every cross-country road trip I ever driven. I had long since come to appreciate Walmart tire service centers in these situations, so we started looking for Walmart signs.

Maybe, in my next post, I'll describe the comedy of finding the largest "tire" store I've ever seen.