Happy Anniversary! Here's a Set of Tires, Honey!

This past weekend was our 10th anniversary. On our honeymoon in Hawaii, I promised Nancy that we'd go back for our 10th anniversary. We didn't make it, so we did the next best thing; Chautauqua Lake, New York in the off season; during the coldest, wettest spring in memory. (Not to repeat myself from my last post, but Global Warming my butt!) It was actually a very pleasant trip and we had a great time. We had great food, visited many wineries, saw some wonderful scenery, took golf lessons and did one of my most favorite things in the whole world; make fun of Canadians. That is another blog posting all in itself.

We decided to be "green" and save the environment by taking Nancy's Prius on the trip instead of the minivan. OK, so we really didn't care about being green, we just wanted to get more than 18MPG on this trip. If you don't know, the Prius is a hybrid which runs on gasoline but has an electric engine which kicks in when it needs a boost; which kinda makes it like the Dick Cheney of cars; but Cheney has even less style and the Prius doesn't want to rule the world.

Anyway, we took a lot of side trips through Moraine State Park, Slippery Rock, Erie, Presque Isle, and North East, PA. Just when we decided that we should be getting to the hotel, the Prius starts acting like the Tilt-a-Whirl at a carnival, swerving from side to side. We pull over and we can actually see the tire deflating before our eyes. Nancy asks if she should call AAA. I say, "No, I'm a man. I can change a tire!" After all, I've seen "Cars". "Pit Stop!" How hard can this be. After 10 minutes the lug nuts are off and the spare is ready to go on. Just one problem. The wheel won't come off. I pull, I swear, I kick, I swear some more, but still nothing. I'm surprised because swearing usually intimidates the inanimate object I'm swearing at to bend to my will. So, defeated, I tell Nancy to call AAA.

Fifteen minutes later, our savior arrives with a railroad tie. He crawls under the car and smacks the living crap out of the tire and it comes off. Toyota's emergency road kit did not include this one, apparently, vital item. He looked at our other tires and showed us the tread, or lack thereof, and steel belts popping through the rubber on them. He sent us on our way with an unspoken, "Hope you make it the 50 miles to Firestone before the other tires fall apart!"

So, I've decided that the 10th anniversary is not tin, nor diamond, nor even wood; it's rubber.. steel belted.