Wednesday July 21, 2010 - Flagstaff, Arizona to Tempe, Arizona

It wasn't as hot as we were fearing on the drive down. It's a familiar route down I-17. I've made it probably dozens of times over the years. This time we had the uncomfortable experience of seeing a vehicle in blazing flames and smoke just north of Anthem, with traffic piling up behind it. Whatever happened didn't happen long before we passed by. News reports later indicated a truck had lost control, hit the guardrail and exploded. Amazingly the driver escaped with minor injuries and no other cars or people were involved. What a blessing.

Having driven roughly 16,000 miles in the last 4.5 months, there have been one or two times when it seemed as though an accident might be in our future. I remember crossing into Massachusetts and seeing two or three extraordinarily stupid moves in the space of about 5 miles - any of which could have led to a very nasty wreck that we likely would have been a part of. But our closest brush with an accident came today. Here in our former home town.

We were near Indian School on I-17 in the HOV lane when I noticed white smoke starting to come from the vehicle two cars up from me - a little sporty jobby that we had been trading pole positions with for probably 20 miles. Sure enough, he had blown his driver-side front tire, and was exiting the HOV lane rapidly and slowly.

That's when the tire completely came off of his wheel. He was still trying to make his way across five lanes of traffic while I was watching his tire bouncing up and down and back into the HOV lane. My lane. I'm not sure what the car ahead of me did to avoid it - perhaps it hadn't bounced completely back into our lane when he passed it by.

Now the tire was bouncing and rolling all around the HOV lane about 100 yards ahead of me as I'm slowing down from 75mph. Traffic is flying as it's lunch hour. I'm not able to get over. I start braking hard, getting down to about 20 mph. That's when I check my rear-view mirror and see a guy bearing down on me hard after jumping into the HOV lane from the fast lane. I watch his whole vehicle lurch as he realizes how fast I'm not going and slams on his brakes. I'm not sure he's going to be able to slow down fast enough, the wheel is coming up right in front of me. I'm hoping it's going to lay down, but it doesn't. I can't come to a stop or I'm going to cause a pile-up behind me. So I hit the tire, hoping it will pass under quickly and easily.

I think that I've gotten past it and start accelerating again when I realize the tire is now caught on our passenger rear tire. It's smoking up like crazy as I try to start working my way over through traffic to exit, with my newfound visibility in the white smoke cloud and extraneous tire. As I reach the far right lane I see the owner of the tire up the road a ways. The tire suddenly breaks free of our tire and bounces along on the shoulder of the freeway. I remember thinking that it would be funny if it bounced back and caught up with it's rightful owner. I'm thinking we're home clear when I realize there's still a friction noise coming from our rear. Now I'm worried about damage the other tire might have done, or whether part of it is still attached. We manage to exit at roughly Indian School and pull quickly into a service station.

The tire had partially popped the lower rear quarter panel, which was easy enough to snap back into place. Part of the inside portion (note my highly technical automotive language) was bent out of place and rubbing against the tire - hence the continued friction noise. Fortunately, our tire appeared none the worse for wear, I was able to manipulate the out-of-place piece back into place, and we were good to go. Off and on the freeway again in under five minutes. That's my kind of pit stop.

The rest of the trip in was uneventful. Cloud cover kept the temperatures down to the low triple digits. We stopped for lunch at our favoritest Vietnamese restaurant - Khai Hoan. Hands down the absolute best lemon-grass chicken in the US. I used to think they had the best spring rolls, but there's a spot in St. Louis that kicks their butt completely on the spring roll count. We've been going to Khai Hoan for over a decade now, and they recognize us and the owner commented on how big the kids have gotten. His own kids are now teen-agers, and we've noted their changes as well.

Afterwards we headed off to Gena's sister's house for a little bit so the cousins could play together. Then it was back to my in-laws home to start setting up for our stay. A good day of travel.