THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ALL YOU LEARN ABOUT WW2 IS "NAZIS BAD BECAUSE GOVERNMENT SAYS SO"

I woke up this morning at 5AM, Tuesday June 28th, 2022.

Took my shower, woke the wife, got dressed, woke the oldest, got 2 pairs of shorts out of the dryer i still needed to pack, watered the plants in the house, watered the plants in the back yard on the patio, took the suitcase down to the car, got the portable blu-ray player with 20 hours of movies, got board games for the family, cleaned some dishes, helped pack food, looked for my oldest shoes that we can't find... loaded the car and set off.

BUT MY DUMB ASS THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUNNY TO PLAY THE THEME SONG "HOLIDAY ROAD" FROM National Lampoons Vacation while getting ready...

Gassed up the car and headed south.

No problems until we hit the Ohio/West Virginia boarder in Gallopolis. The car says

LOW TIRE PRESSURE.

That means a catastrophic failure in my tires integrity. So we stop at a Loves truck stop off Rt35

Put air in the tire. I can hear and feel the leak.

SHIT!

So I bust ass towards the nearest tire center that is 11 miles and 15 minutes away. But I feel the ass end getting squirrely.

So I stop at a Speedway and put more air into it just trying to preserve the tire so I don't have to buy a new one.

Put air into the tire and bust ass to a damned Walmart tire center.

We get there, ask the to see if it can be patched, there are 2 people ahead of us. So we wait... there is a hair salon in the damned Walmart. We see if they can cut the boys hair. It will be 10:30 before they can and that's too long so we go back to the tire department.

"We can't patch your tire because the inner tread is bald."

"OK, put a new tire on it for me please."

"We don't carry that size and need to order it. It will be two days."

(Turns out 245/40/19 is not a common size tire so fuck me, right?)

"I DONT HAVE TWO DAYS BECAUSE IM MEETING A FAMILY AT OUR RESORT THE NEXT DAY AT 4..."

"Well... try Dailey tire, maybe they will have one."

So I call and wouldn't you know, they DO! They had two 245/40/19 tires!

So I send my wife to the hair appointment for the boys, I have the dude at the tire center use a Cheetah (pressure tank) to fill my tire and then rip ass town the road to Dailey's

I pull up, tires flat, they drop me in bay 4 as shown, grab the new tire, (A Goodyear, we have Pirelli"s) jack up the car, pull the lugs, "Hey pops grab me the hammer", "The big one or the small one?", "Small one will work.", knocks the wheel off, shows me TWO punctures, and dismounts, mounts, and balances the tire all in 15 minutes.

$212.00

I go back to Walmart and sit until 11:30 till the boys are done with their haircuts and hop back on the road 2 hours behind schedule.

$60 including tip

Trip is smooth sailing.

LOW TIRE PRESSURE

What. The. Fuck. WHY!?

I tell my wife fuck it let's just find a service center.

CLOSEST ONE IS 15 MILES IN THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN'S IN BLUEFIELD?

This time I drive the motherfucker till its wopwopwopwopwopwop.... and stop in the middle of Butt Fuck Egypt under an overpass outside of fucking Bluefield West Virginia.

And I start calling.

And calling.

And calling.

There are 18 listed tire shops or service centers in the above photo. 6 of them never answered.

The other 12 don't carry 245/40/19 because it is an uncommon size.

So my wife is contacting roadside through our insurance company and needs a drop-off so I tell her Walmart just to get it somewhere off the highway. I keep trying to find a damned 245/40/19 and realize that we won't arrive to Orlando the next day until 10:30PM If the wind blows right, a unicorn farts magic dust into our gas tank, nobody needs to eat or piss, and I don't blow another fucking tire!

The tow driver shows up after an hour and a half. He says, "Did you try Kitts?" Well shit, everybody said Kitts. "Tow us to Kitts, they can get us one by 9:30 in the morning". Maybe we can make it by 10:30PM in Orlando leaving the other family by themselves for 6 hours. (They can't check in without us because they are our guest.)

He replies, "I can't without clearance from your insurance company." (See confused meme above)

Wife frantically tries to contact the claims department, she's freaked out and falling apart silently, I'm shutting down, the driver walks up and starts the process of getting us to Kitts.

"Just tell em I took you to Walmart."

He unloads us on the left and I have the brilliant idea to call all the dealerships in the area. Surely one of them has a 245/40/19

Now understand during all of this I have a 13 and almost 8 year old asking when we will get to Orlando. My wife is trying to cancel our hotel in Savanna, Georgia while talking to the other family meeting us, dealing with insurance, trying to calm down, and get us a hotel in wherever we are for the night.

I call Nissan, "Hey I'm in a bind, I'm looking for an odd ti...." I get a tap on the shoulder.

It's the owner of Kitts.

"Hey, we have your tire in the back. We just found it. In fact we have two and didn't know it. They aren't in the inventory......."

$240

(Side note, a gottdamned McLaren drove past this tire shop while I was on the phone with my dad while they were installing our tire) in THIS town?

So here I am, in my hotel bed next to my 13 year old with my wife snoring 3 feet away from me, at 1:24 in the morning after shaving 45 minutes off a 6.5 hour stretch doing 15 to 20 MPH over the limit through Virginia, North and South Carolina and 12 miles into Georgia.

We should have got here at 6PM. We got here at 11, we're $500 poorer and we haven't even reached Orlando yet.

Don't EVER listen to "Holiday Road" before going on a trip. Nothing good will happen.

Until tomorrow, bye bitches.

That sounds like a massive pain the ass. Were you too far along to go back to Daily's via the tow truck for the second one they had in inventory?