If the world is trying to tell me to drive less, it should really consider reevaluating its tactics, since I am a little slow when it comes to these things. Yes, I understand that ridiculous catastrophes keep happening. No, I don’t see how driving less is the answer. My brain cannot compute that possibility. It’s like telling my brain that eating less pizza or drinking less beer will somehow be good for my health… Oh. Right. Whatever.

At the end of my California vacation, I drove down to San Diego with a friend to hang out at my brother’s place for a couple days. On our way back up to LA we got as far as Pacific Beach before getting a flat tire that turned into a debacle of epic proportions. I am still perplexed as to how one flat tire created such a fiasco.

But that, coupled with the trip home, has created a new list of important lessons from the road:

1. Know your limits.

This was the primary theme of my reflection on the drive to LA. I clearly did not learn my lesson since I did the drive home in 25 hours. I have been working all week and I still feel like I have sleep to catch up on. So that’s awesome. But this lesson was also inherent in the flat tire episode.

I was in the far left lane of I-5 when my rear driver’s side tire exploded. I couldn’t clear the four lanes of 80mph traffic to get to the right shoulder, so I had to pull off to the left and start changing my tire.

Fun fact: I have never actually changed a tire. I have started to on many occasions, but something about a girl stranded on the side of the road always gets me a random passerby or even a cop to come do it for me. It’s pretty awesome, actually. But I have participated in nearly all steps of the process at some time or another, and I’ve seen it done plenty of times. I figured it couldn’t possibly be that difficult.

photo via Ashley’s post

I got the car all jacked up and put the wheel lock key on the locked lug nut and I was all good to go…until I realized that in spite of my best efforts at the gym, I could not get the stupid things to budge.

My friend offered to call AAA when we first got the flat but I was all, “Nooo, by the time they get here I’ll have this changed already. I don’t want to wait on the side of the road any longer than we need to.” Har har har. So after fucking around with it for twenty minutes, I admitted defeat and let her call them so we could wait another half an hour for their arrival.

2. Know your surroundings

The one time I made the DC-LA trip, I took the 10 for about half of it. I was running a fever and probably had the flu or something but I was too broke to get a hotel room. I was also in a mad dash to get to California because I had timed the trip around my best friend’s 21st birthday. I had never been on this particular stretch of road by myself before and wanted nothing more than to get to my destination and a bed. Mostly a bed. If I knew of a bed I could get to sooner, I probably would have chosen bed over best friend’s birthday.

I decided to take a sleep break somewhere in Arizona, hoping that it would be the last one. It was the middle of the night and I was sick and sleepy and had probably taken too much DayQuil. I only vaguely recall how this all played out which is a clear sign that I was violating rule #1 about my limits, but I was trying to sleep so stop judging me, damnit. I remember pulling into a nice, new-looking gas station and that the store was closed because it was 2 or 3 in the morning. I parked. Slept. Woke up. Backed up to the pump…and then I think I got back in my car and passed out again. I’m not entirely sure about this part.

Eventually I woke up again and got out to put gas in my car and get on the road. Almost immediately after doing this a cop came and interrogated me about what I was doing there, explained how suspicious I looked, checked my license and registration, and did everything in his power to terrify me until he felt convinced that I was nothing more than a pathetic lonely traveler. He then reminded me of how close to the border I was. And the fact that being close to the border in the middle of nowhere (i.e., not in any of the major cities) meant that I was also in a high crime area. Oops.

My failure to internalize this lesson was, of course, also a factor in our flat tire debacle. While we were waiting for the fine folks at AAA to get there, Ashley (my friend, not to be confused with Lion) and decided that I should really try to get further off to the shoulder because I was uncomfortably close to the cars flying by us. I should have considered that in the first place though. Being that we were on the left shoulder of a major freeway, I should have gotten as far to the left as I possibly could have. This is just one of so many shoulda-woulda-coulda moments in the ordeal.

3. Know your vehicle’s limits

In keeping with the Murphy’s Law trajectory of this day, when I went to start the car I found that my battery had died. I’m not sure if it was my hazard lights being on for 20 minutes, or my stupid battery thieving stereo/ipod combo. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, this is the one lesson I have taken to heart. I made damn sure to unplug every single gizmo on my car during all of my gas stops once I was finally able to get on the road home (which, in case you hadn’t guessed, is still a ways out in this story).

I think the greatest testament to knowing your vehicle’s limits in my repertoire of road trip tales, is one of my oldest stories. I was 16 and driving from Chicago to San Diego with my cousin in her car. My dad had beaten into my head that I should check the oil in my badass minivan at every single gas stop, but since I wasn’t in my car, I didn’t consider this an issue. About an hour or so from the Arizona-California state line, we noticed that the car was definitely overheating. It wasn’t until we got to San Diego that we realized that her car had been leaking oil. We paid dearly for not respecting her vehicle’s limits. We had to make the journey across the Mojave desert with the heat on. Entering the desert at around noon. In August. So awesome. The rest areas in California have these spiffy little water pumps that I assume are for your overheating car and probably spew out highly infested water. We used it to cool ourselves off. Between the sweat and the sewage water, my own odor made me want to vomit.

4. Keep an eye on your belongings at all times

The next time you hear this advice at an airport, just know that TSA is not just telling you how to avoid being accused of terrorism, but also imparting valuable life advice. Know what all of your shit is and make sure you put it away if you aren’t using it.

Before AAA came to rescue us, a cop did. Unlike my previous flat-tire-cop experience, he did not change the tire for me. He did, however, have his partner run a stop and then push my car across four lanes of traffic because he felt we were unsafe where we were, so I have to give him credit for being pretty damn helpful.

Unfortunately, after this happened and he went on his merry little way, the day was just getting started for us. When I put everything back in my car I forgot to take the wheel lock key off the tire. So now my wheel lock is sitting somewhere on the 5. And Mr. AAA Man could not change my tire. All he could do for us was give us a tow somewhere with seven miles.

5. Always assume the worst

The rest of this story extends over the next two days, so I won’t get into all of the nitty gritty details. The short version (we’re a little late for this, I know) is this: we called the nearest Ford dealership and after being transferred around got verbal confirmation that since I still had the factory-issued wheel lock, they could definitely replace it for us. They admitted that it may take a couple hours because they were backed up. No indication was made that it would not be done today or that the wheel lock was not easily replaceable.

Unfortunately, after we got there, we were told that they were so backed up that we would have to wait until Monday (I was planning on leaving for home on Sunday…) Additionally, they wanted to sell me a new battery and not just one, but three new tires.

I don’t have hundreds of dollars lying around. I barely had enough money to cover the cost of gas to get myself home. The question was not what needed to be done to get me home, but what my mom could be convinced to pay for in order to get me home. After briefly playing middle man to my mom and the dealership on Monday morning, I just had my mom call them.

My mom is a magical person. I know most people think that their mothers are awesome, but this woman gets shit done. Anyone who has ever seen her go can attest to this.

At some point during the day they tried to tell her that not only could they not replace the key, they were going to charge us more money because of the additional labor required in getting the tires off. They were also charging us about $250 each for the tires. And then of course there was the battery.

I don’t know what she said or what she did, but at around four on Monday, the dealership’s shuttle came to pick me up. My car was back in business with three new tires and my mom paid around $600 for all of it (tires, labor, tax, etc.)

After dinner with my Aunt and Uncle, I was finally on the road home. And yes, at every gas stop I made, I checked my tires, unplugged everything, and assumed every single person I encountered was placed there to serve as some sort of impediment to my trip.

But at no point did I ever revisit this idea that I should call it quits with the constant road trips. Like I said, I’m a slow learner.