Adventure on I-45

Today my younger brother, my dad and, I packed up my apartment and hopped onto I-45 to make the long, but usually mundane, drive from Houston to Arlington. Little did I know that soon I would be in for the adventure of a lifetime... or at least a few seconds of terror followed by some sweat and dirt.

I was driving along, minding my own business when suddenly the back end of my car started making a lot of noise and shaking. At first I thought I was just on a rough section of 45, but then I saw smoke out of my rear view mirror. I realized that this was not simply a rough section of road, but in fact an especially rough section of road and decided to pull over and see what kind of groves the department of transportation had put in the pavement. Low and behold when I pulled over to inspect the roadway I found out that the highway was actually pretty normal; I had just blown a tire. (Maybe that's what that tire-looking object was that I saw in my rear view mirror a second before pulling over...)

My tire (or lack thereof)

I've had a few flats before, but nothing has ever even come close to this one. I'm really thankful that I was in the right lane and had a fairly easy time pulling off of the highway and onto the shoulder.

My younger brother Connor was with me in the car and he managed to take the above photo and the video below once we got off of the highway. It seems that his habit of picture taking and movie making has payed off for my blog. Thanks bro! (Just to address the question before it gets asked, the purple bean-bag chair in the front seat belongs to my girlfriend. She left it at her house and I'm bringing it to her on Monday when I get back to school.)

On the bright side of things, I found out that I have a really cool jack in the trunk of my car. I also discovered that my spare tire is a real tire and not just a doughnut. How cool is that? I'm definitely buying another VW when I get a new car. Now if only they would find a way to keep the tires from exploding...