A Flat In the Middle of Nowhere
Well well well.. it was bound to happen. My first flat tire in the van.
The UP is not a very forgiving place to get a flat. There are miles of no cell signal, tons of backroads and very few towns in between. I woke up on the Fourth of July with a flat. I was parked in a snowmobile lot way out of town and barely had enough signal to call AAA. I have great things to say about AAA, but with it being a holiday and me being in the middle of no where, there weren’t may options for tow trucks. I waited a couple hours and called AAA again who said they were still working on it and this went on for another few hours. Eventually, AAA called and told me there was no provider available in the area to come help me.
It had been 5 hours and I was out of luck. Not knowing what to do, I called the local sheriff and asked for them to send me someone. They called the ONLY man within 3 hours of my who was working that day. Once he made it out to me, he was able to fill up my tire enough to get it to town (about ~25 miles). It was at this exact moment I decided to buy a cordless air pump to keep in the van. Something to always have, an air pump.
When I got into town the only shop was closed for the 4th of July Holiday so I parked in their lot and waited for the morning. The town was having a small Fourth of July celebration and had fireworks on the lake so not too bad of a place to be broken down.
The next morning I woke up and got a coffee from the little shop nearby and chatted with the owner telling him I was waiting for Skip, the auto shop owner to open so he could patch the tire. After an hour of waiting on Skip, the coffee shop owner came over and said he would give Skip a call for me to see when I could expect him back. Skip said he wasn’t coming in that day. So I walked over to the Ace Hardward and bought the only air pump they had. The cord wasn’t long enough to reach the back tire so a couple plugged it into their car and I filled up the tire.
Then I set off to drive another 40 miles to the next town. Luckily the tire and I made it all the way there and the shop there patched it in 15 minutes!
Life on the road is all about being flexible and just making it work with what you have. People can be incredibly kind and helpful when you are traveling alone and asking for help is sometimes just what needs to happen.
