The rest of the tire-d story

I'm sitting in front of our motel room in McBride, BC. It's cold and rainy, but I can only get wireless outside. That's ok, because Connor just locked us out of the room while Rich is taking a shower. So I might as well post the end of the flat tire story. It worked out just fine!

We drove 750 km = 470 miles on a donut spare. You know, the kind which is supposed to be driven for 50 miles max? Yeah. We had the flat on Saturday and immediately when we got down off the mountain, the next town had an open tire shop. Unfortunately, they didn't have the right size tire. They had the one bigger and the one smaller, but not ours. His wife just bought the same kind of minivan we have, so he'll stock those in the future...

Every town from Alaska to Prince George had a tire shop that was closed on Sunday. We thought we got lucky once, when we saw one with an open bay. Turns out he had only opened up to get one bit of work done and answer the phone. Then a boat pulled up, needing a trailer tire fixed, then we pulled up needing a new tire. He said his wife was going to be angry. He didn't have the right tire in stock either. And he was amazed we had gone so far on the donut. We were only halfway to Prince George.

Prince George had a Wal Mart, which we figured would be the only open tire shop on Sunday. They made some noises about having to match the tread on all the tires, and how they don't have the right brand and anyway, they don't have the right size in stock. But they said the Canadian Tire just down the hill was open. And they filled up the donut, which by now was making a loud hissing sound.

The Canadian Tire was open, and a nice young tattoed man named Dave fixed us right up, with the last tire of our size in his inventory. We got the display tire. The better news was his shop was right next door to a Fatburger. We hadn't stopped for lunch in our hurry to beat the donut from collapsing. We ate a lot.

Richard says the minivan handles a lot better with 4 good tires!