So one day in May 1998 I was driving through Orem, Utah when suddenly I heard a CLANG—clunkclunkclunkclunk accompanied by a loud hiss. I pulled over and found that I hadn't merely run over a nail, leaving a tire that could be easily fixed; instead, my overachieving car had run over a wrench—yes, a wrench—that then embedded itself in the inside wall of the tire, leaving a hole about a half inch in diameter. Shortly thereafter I was the proud owner of (yet) a(nother)* brand-new tire.

Fast-forward just over eight years to August 18, 2006, about 19 hours before I was to embark upon a 1500-mile drive. While driving near the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, I heard the same CLANG—clunkclunkclunkclunk, accompanied by the same loud hiss. Unlike most people, who require only one tire-death-by-wrench experience, I apparently didn't learn whatever lesson I needed the first time. And apparently I needed even more schoolin' this time, because while I was attempting to raise Simon Bennett in 101-degree (Soul-Sucking Hot) heat, with the pavement burning my knees through my jeans so that I had to kneel on the owner's manual and with eyes stinging because I couldn't wipe away the sweat with hands that were covered with dirt and grease, the jack first began to sink into the pavement and then broke altogether. ([Expletive deleted] cheap dealership jacks.) Fortunately MINI Roadside Assistance came to the rescue within about 45 minutes; I then had 90 minutes to find a new MINI-size tire in Little Rock before everything closed for the weekend--a rather daunting task. Luckily the manager of the third place I called apparently has a soft spot for desperate-sounding Yankees, because he was kind enough to send an employee that he was really too busy to spare over to the warehouse and work me into the already overcrowded schedule at the end of an incredibly busy Friday. Thank goodness for people like him.

So the tire incident and losing my keys Saturday morning and Simon Bennett's invisibility cloak (unsuspected until three separate vehicles tried to pull over on him) and waaaay too much caffeine Saturday evening and even more caffeine Sunday morning and Ohio drivers who think 66 MPH is a perfectly acceptable speed for the fast lane and an incredibly painful combination of toll road insanity and bathroom/gas station idiocy in New York were the less-fun aspects of the trip; however, the drive also included an amazing Cincinnati sunset, a pillow-top mattress at my roommates' parents' magic house, an exquisitely beautiful view of Lake Erie, charming countryside vistas, good music, an audiobook about Ben Franklin, several episodes of This American Life (probably my all-time favorite NPR program), good conversations with several friends, numerous law enforcement agents whose radar guns somehow missed me, and a 90-minute stop in Palmyra, New York, where a long wander through the Sacred Grove was decrankifying and soothing enough to make the final 5.5 hours very close to enjoyable. I arrived home at almost exactly 12:30 this morning to welcoming hugz from my roommates and cool, pleasant temperatures. I think I'll stay here a while.

*Remember the brief aside in the “Update from a time zone jumper” post about a tire disintegrating in pre-dawn Roseville, California? I had to buy four new tires before I drove back to Utah. One of these 10-day-old Michelins was the wrench recipient.

In the last update I mentioned that I was headed to Lake Tahoe to spend a few days doing all sorts of constructive things, like sipping virgin daiquiris and working on my tan. Well, despite a rather alarming Mustang-overheating episode in Roseville (a truly wretched town for Fords—I passed several less-than-pleasant hours there on Saturday, May 1, 1998, after one of the tires on Susanna [my 1990 Escort from HELL—oh, how I detested that car] disintegrated at 4:30 AM as I was driving from Provo to Oakland), we made it to our cabin (with its thrice-blessed wireless Internet access) safely on Tuesday night. And I spent the next day—my first ever at Lake Tahoe, enchanted paradise of swimmers, fishers, hikers, and outdoorspeople of all stripes—

In bed. All day.

That is, except for the two times I managed to stagger out to the living room for a few minutes, looking "like death" (according to my aunt) and feeling like I'd been beaten by a steamroller. Fortunately, thanks to some late-evening magic pasta a la Jessica, the illness provided only 24 hours of abject misery and the attempt to not throw up was successful. (Would that I had had some magic pasta on the overnight train in Zimbabwe, though I doubt even that would have been sufficient to counteract the synergistically antisalubrious forces of baaaad sadza ma nyama, ramshackle machinery, inescapable cigarette smoke, and miasmic eau de humanity.)