Blow Out

It is a classic parental fear.  You are driving at high speed, with your child beside you, and your tire blows out.  In my case it was at 70 mph on Interstate 64 in West Virginia in a heavily laden van.

This is something like what the tire looked like.

This is something like what the tire looked like.

And we were lucky.  There was little traffic on this 4th of July weekend Saturday evening.  The weather was clear.  And the Ford van behaved relatively well as i pulled to the side of the road and turned on my flashers.

Almost immediately some folks en route to an Arrowsmith concert stopped to try to help us.  Better World (the groovy alternative to triple A that Twin Oaks uses) did a fully adequate job of getting us a guy who could replace the tire.

While we were waiting Ali and Willow and i chatted, watched to touching and timely Macklemore video Same Love and chilled.

Mackelmore Same Love

Then once the tire got repaired the van would not start.  Mysteriously the fuel pump seemed have failed at the time when the tire blew out.  This meant we were staying in Beckley for the night and getting towed.  Another wait, another hang out with some of my favorite people.

It was after 1 AM on what had already been a long and somewhat trying day before we got to the room to go to sleep.  And what struck me was that my son did not complain once about the situation, the delays, the hazards, the back tracking, the false starts.  And i realized that i would like most adults to be as pleasant and resilient as my 11 year old is.