It wasn’t enough to have the close call with my bike tire last week. This time, it was for real. In my car. I was driving to work yesterday after picking up a pair of casual carpoolers and just before the 80/580 split, a horrendous noise erupts from the right side of my car. I was doing about 65 in the fast lane and didn’t see any debris on the road. Apparently there was because the horrendous noise was my right rear tire being taken out. The next thing I know, I’m flat and the guy driving next to me was wildly gesturing that I had a flat.

Wonderful. I didn’t have anywhere to pull over because there is no shoulder there so I flipped on the hazards and eased it back to about 35 with cars coming up on my tail much too quickly. I rolled into the Bay Bridge toll plaza and decided to try to make it up to the toll plaza parking lot because Caltrans trucks usually camp out there. I figured they’d have a real car jack and tire iron that would make the job of swapping wheels much faster. As luck would have it, I got there and they’re nowhere to be found. One of my passengers asks a toll plaza employee to send help and they tell me someone will be on the way. That wasn’t fast enough for me so I haul out the tools.

About 15 minutes later, I had the spare on and was ready to roll. I didn’t want to delay my carpoolers any more than they already had been so I only took a cursory look at my tire.

I figured my front tire kicked up a piece of metal and ripped through the tread. Oh well. Time for new tires anyway.

After I got home, I took a much closer look at the tire to see if it’s patchable and what do I spot?

Holy handgrenade! Whatever I hit, it ripped through the tire and blasted through my rims! That explained why the sound I heard hit 10 on the thisisgoingtobefuckingexpensive-O-meter.

So at the moment, the EP3 is rolling all sexy like.

And I need to figure out if this is the perfect excuse to graduate to 16″ rims.