blowouts

We had our first blowout ever on our trip north from Florida at the end of March. Our tires were 6 and 7 years old and we were planning to replace them this year anyway. The blowout occurred on I-95 at 65 mph near Brunswick, GA, but weight, inflation, or even age, had nothing to do with it. A truck hauling a utility trailer filled with assorted scrap metal lost part of its load when a side board failed, and we caught some of the shrapnel. One tire blew immediately, and when I pulled off the road, I found another tire was badly cut, but still holding air. We were fortunate, since it was a Sunday afternoon, that a friendly tow truck driver stopped while I was putting on the spare, rather than wait for an ERS contractor, to see if we needed any help. I asked him if he knew of any tire shops that were open. After giving him the tire size, he made a couple of calls and found a Tire Kingdom shop in Brunswick that was not only open, but had the tires we needed in stock. About an hour later, we were back on the road with two new tires installed. I do have some relatively minor body damage to deal with yet, but all in all, it was not the horrible experience it could have been. This past week we had the remaining four tires replaced with matching tires, although we did have to drive 150 miles from our upstate NY cottage to the nearest dealer in Vermont to get them put on. Spending a few days at a nearby campground made a fun trip out of it though.