By 9:00 P.M., the caffeine that I purchased from Starbucks had completely worn off and we still had 5 more hours of driving ahead of us. I was not going to stop and get an “energy” drink. That just feels like I would be crossing some imaginary line that shouldn’t be crossed.
When I told my daughter that I was going to have to pull off the road to sleep for awhile, she started volunteering to drive.
“Dad, I’m pretty fresh. I can drive for a little while.”
I wasn’t really all that thrilled with the idea of my 16 year old daughter driving at night while I slept.
After talking about it for a half an hour, I started to cave. I was thinking that if I could sleep for an hour, I would be refreshed enough to drive the final 3 hours home.
“You can’t take any chances. If you feel even slightly sleepy, you need to get off at the next off ramp.”
“Yes, sir. I will.”
As we pulled off the off ramp, a small, strange noise started coming from the back of the truck…almost like someone turned on a switch.
I filled the truck up with gas, switched seats with Cakes and we headed back out onto the road.
As soon as we got underway, the noise resumed.
My first thought was that it must be the tires. I knew I needed new tires but I didn’t think they were THAT bad!
“Pull off the freeway.”
The next off ramp had what looked like a 60 watt light bulb 40 feet above the road. Since I couldn’t see anything, I checked the the tires by hand and found nothing…no bubbles, no exposed metal core…just rubber.
As I stood up to clean my hands and wash the car, I realized that I could not let her drive. There is no way that she is experienced enough to handle an emergency if the noise did turn out to be a tire. Also, up ahead of us, the sky was flashing with lightning.
I gave her the bad news and climbed back into the driver’s seat. I was so, so tired but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.
It was white knuckle driving for the next 4 hours.
The noise didn’t really get worse. It just never stopped. Every time I passed a car, I made sure I had a good grip on the steering wheel, pulled as far to their left as I could and then drove as straight as I am capable of driving. Then, after passing them, I didn’t re-enter the slow lane until I was certain that we were far enough ahead of them that they would have enough time to react without crashing into us if our tire blew out,…that is, if I was able to bring the truck safely to a stop!
Second, the storm ended up being 200 miles long. The whole time I was concerned about the truck hydroplaning on my needing-to-be-replaced tires.
To top it all off, as I drove mile after mile, it occurred to me that my mind could be exaggerating the whole situation because I was so tired. However, the only way to change that would be to pull over and sleep so I just had to live with it.
We woke up at 3:45 A.M. We got in bed at 2:15 A.M. and a lot happened in between.
