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I forgot to share this one. This happened about a week ago.
I was heading out to Framingham to visit some old friends at the School of Ram since our favorite anime con was in two weeks. I take a back road to get to one of the major routes that then connects to the Turnpike. About 5 or 6 car lengths ahead of me is an old Tacoma, early 2000s (so okay maybe not that old) barely doing 25 on this 35 mph road. So I fall back since there was nobody behind me and stick to 25.
She hits a bump in the road, and this huge thing falls from under her truck bed and starts bouncing at me. It's her spare tire. I slow down some more, hoping it will go around ol' Bleu, but no such luck. It bounces off the passenger side of my car, goes up in the air, comes down and bounces off the same side again before ricocheting off and rolling up the road some 200 feet, uphill, to land in a ditch on the other side of the street.
We put on our emergency flashers while this is happening and follow the tire very slowly until we see it stop. When it does, we pull over and get out. The driver in the Tacoma gets out: a woman in her mid 60s all dressed up for church. She looks hysterical, so me being the bigger person I am reassure her that I'm okay, everything's going to be okay, let's go rescue your spare.
We find the tire and rescue it, almost unsuccessfully because that thing was heavy and even though she was helping I knew she couldn't lift much. No one pulled over to help us either. But we managed to get it upright to roll it back to her car.
The whole time she's still hysterical, both cursing Him for making the tire fall off and thanking Him that it didn't happen on a much faster road with more people around. Meanwhile I'm praying she doesn't go into a coronary in the middle of the road, she's freaking out so much. I offer to look under her truck to see where the tire had fallen from after we load it into her truck bed, and sure enough, the claw that holds the spare has rusted away. All it needed was that bump she hit to knock the spare loose.
I check Bleu, and she has scuffs around the headlight on the passenger side, nothing more. I quickly discover if I wet my thumb and rub, it comes off. I tell her this and she relaxes quite a bit. She gives me a business card with her number on it to call her if it doesn't come off. I told her I would call her either way so she wouldn't worry, she had already done enough of that in the last 20 minutes or so.
We part ways before she leaves me with this last gem: "You know, this same thing happened last week with my '99 van, except that was the gas tank!"
For the record, the scuff came off cleanly with a damp Magic Eraser, except for the scuffs on the headlight. There is a long black scratch on the line, but that will be easily fixed with some touch-up paint, which I have. There's no other damage, and the car runs just fine. I still called her that evening, and she was very relieved, but I could still tell the incident had been bugging her all day.
I was heading out to Framingham to visit some old friends at the School of Ram since our favorite anime con was in two weeks. I take a back road to get to one of the major routes that then connects to the Turnpike. About 5 or 6 car lengths ahead of me is an old Tacoma, early 2000s (so okay maybe not that old) barely doing 25 on this 35 mph road. So I fall back since there was nobody behind me and stick to 25.
She hits a bump in the road, and this huge thing falls from under her truck bed and starts bouncing at me. It's her spare tire. I slow down some more, hoping it will go around ol' Bleu, but no such luck. It bounces off the passenger side of my car, goes up in the air, comes down and bounces off the same side again before ricocheting off and rolling up the road some 200 feet, uphill, to land in a ditch on the other side of the street.
We put on our emergency flashers while this is happening and follow the tire very slowly until we see it stop. When it does, we pull over and get out. The driver in the Tacoma gets out: a woman in her mid 60s all dressed up for church. She looks hysterical, so me being the bigger person I am reassure her that I'm okay, everything's going to be okay, let's go rescue your spare.
We find the tire and rescue it, almost unsuccessfully because that thing was heavy and even though she was helping I knew she couldn't lift much. No one pulled over to help us either. But we managed to get it upright to roll it back to her car.
The whole time she's still hysterical, both cursing Him for making the tire fall off and thanking Him that it didn't happen on a much faster road with more people around. Meanwhile I'm praying she doesn't go into a coronary in the middle of the road, she's freaking out so much. I offer to look under her truck to see where the tire had fallen from after we load it into her truck bed, and sure enough, the claw that holds the spare has rusted away. All it needed was that bump she hit to knock the spare loose.
I check Bleu, and she has scuffs around the headlight on the passenger side, nothing more. I quickly discover if I wet my thumb and rub, it comes off. I tell her this and she relaxes quite a bit. She gives me a business card with her number on it to call her if it doesn't come off. I told her I would call her either way so she wouldn't worry, she had already done enough of that in the last 20 minutes or so.
We part ways before she leaves me with this last gem: "You know, this same thing happened last week with my '99 van, except that was the gas tank!"
For the record, the scuff came off cleanly with a damp Magic Eraser, except for the scuffs on the headlight. There is a long black scratch on the line, but that will be easily fixed with some touch-up paint, which I have. There's no other damage, and the car runs just fine. I still called her that evening, and she was very relieved, but I could still tell the incident had been bugging her all day.
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