The day my “run-flat” tire went flat, and smoky!

This is a little off topic from my usual natural mom content here, but I just have to warn, vent and tell about what happened to me on Tuesday.

I drive a 2009 Honda Odyssey, Touring model. It has all the bells and whistles like a built in GPS and DVD player. I like the GPS because I always get lost and my husband gets tired of me calling him for directions.

I like the automatic doors because I never have to ask my kids twice to get in the car or worry about them slamming the door into the car next to us in the parking lot. The automatic hatch is a gem too, when every finger is in use carrying the 401 items that get unloaded from the car daily, at the same time while balancing a toddler on my hip.

Other than that, I’d rather be driving an old VW bus or a new Prius. I’m not a mini-van lover kind of mom. It’s safe. So I drive it. We call it Betty the Bus.

With all the high rated safety features on my van, comes run-flat tires. Which is essentially a spare tire inside a tire, giving drivers the ability to drive on a flat tire long enough to get to a dealer where you can have it safely fixed.

The complete opposite scenario happened to me on Tuesday. Before I warn and vent any further, I’ll happily disclose that Honda, as well as Acura, stopped using these tires after 2009.

Lucky me! My van just missed the cut off. The time we looked into buying traditional tires for the van, we found out that requires a major expensive overhaul of the entire wheel system. So we are stuck with the tires.

And on Tuesday, I REALLY got stuck with them.

I was traveling from Knoxville, Tennessee where we live to my parent’s house in Canton, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. It was me driving, with my three kids and our dog Lulu.

Nearly halfway through the trip I pulled over due to heavy rain, and decided to take the back roads. It was a good thing. Because when I pulled back on the road the check tire pressure light came on. And then the light came on saying I was driving on a run-flat tire, with a warning to go 50 MPH MAX.

Oh great! Here I was driving with with three kids a dog, who was thankfully contained in her travel crate inside the van (we removed one of the bucket seats and that’s where she rides).

There was a Honda dealership in Cleveland, Tennessee less than seven miles away from where I was at. But it was 3:00. I know these things are not quick to have changed. I have waited up to two hours getting one fixed before, with a scheduled appointment. Plus, the service department closed at 5:00.

AND what would I do with my 55-pound dog? Surely she would not be allowed in the playroom while we wait….and wait….and wait into the dinnertime hour with half of our trip still ahead of us. That is not the scenario they use to sell their family friendly vehicle, with images of taking along the dog for a family camping trip.

The manual says I can drive up to 125 miles on multiple run-flat tires at a time. I just had one flat tire, with a piece of metal stuck in it.

I made the executive decision to stick on the back roads, not go over 40 MPH, let the kids watch as many movies as they wanted in the car, and putz my way along until I made the 90 mile journey to the Canton dealership.

My dad would meet us there. I would leave the van to be worked on the following day and get a ride back to his house with the kids (and the dog) in his giant SUV.

Sounded like a good enough plan. Not too painful. We would make the best of it.

I pulled off to the side a few times to let trucks and cars pass us who were obviously wanting to travel at a faster speed than us. Once a nice man driving with his wife and child offered to change my tire for me.

I WISH I could have said yes. He was befuddled when I told him the van didn’t even come with a spare tire. That it is not even possible to change the tire, without a high tech fancy system that only Honda dealerships and certified Michelin PAX service providers own and operate.

I double-checked the driver’s manual that displayed photos of the warning lights that could appear while driving on the PAX run-flat tire system. The first was a basic one I mentioned above, not to drive over 50 MPR. I got that.

The second had a warning saying Get to Dealer. The third one said in big red letters STOP DRIVING!

I left the mode on in my dashboard the whole 80 miles I drove, watching it to make sure the signal didn’t get more telling of a stronger warning.

The last 20 miles I had to travel on a small interstate – I 575.  I began feeling like something was not right. The sound of the tire got louder, the road felt bumper. I had read a page in the manual that said these sounds were normal. So I kept driving, nervously, cautiously, and even more slowly.

Ten miles from the dealership the tire completely blew up. Smoke, panicky children, a mom trying to keep her cool.

Not the picture of what is touted as the safest family vehicle on the market. Especially seeing how closely I was following the directions of the manual.

The old VW bus is looking even better now. One that doesn’t even come with a manual. One where I could have taken the nice man up on his gentlemanly offer to help me change a flat tire.

I really wish I could say I knew how to change my own tire, and that I did so to teach my girls a lesson on self-sufficiency. But I don’t know how to do that. The last time I got stuck with flat tire I was in college.

I was, and still am, a Daddy’s girl. I remember calling my dad who was four hours way, and him saying, “What do you want me to do about it?

Then I called the fraternity house where I had a lot of friends, and they sent a freshman pledge to my rescue. Those were the simple car times with my little two door Toyota and a tire that costs about $100. Now mine costs $350 to replace.

Tuesday I did call my dad. And he came to my rescue, plus my three kids and my dog.

All in all, I think I did an okay job keeping my cool. Except in the five seconds I panicked that the van was on fire and I needed to get the kids out. I opened one of the doors and the burnt rubber stinky smoke filled the car. Then common sense told me the smoke was from the tire, not the engine. The tire was in the back, away from the engine, and on the opposite side from the gas tank.

We would be fine, as long as a car didn’t hit us sitting there on the side of the road. We WERE able to pull off pretty far, under a bridge. So we all stayed buckled up until my dad got there, who was sitting 10 miles down the road waiting for us at the Honda dealership.

I also called 911, to have a police car there to caution drivers of what we had going on. When my dad arrived we transferred car seats and moved the dog crate – with the dog still in it!

The police officer was SO nice. I called AAA but they said it would be an hour wait to have my car towed. Not so nice, seeing my kids had one bathroom break (and none for the dog) since this whole adventure began when we pulled out of our Knoxville driveway at 1:15. Waiting another hour would have made things even worse.

I originally needed to get to the Honda dealership by 7:00 to get my van checked in, to be worked on in the morning. I missed that deadline.

The police officer arranged a local guy named Nathan, who works through AAA – apparently – to tow my car.

So we drive off, leaving my van with the police officer that said Nathan would drop it off at the dealership and put the key in the drop box. I had no idea if they even had a drop box for keys.

“Sure. Sounds great at this point,” I said. Thankfully it all panned out the right way, and my van really IS at the dealership this morning.

I will be giving the Honda folks the FULL story I laid out here, and telling them exactly what I think about those so-called safety tires.

Maybe they’ll offer me a trade in, for a vintage VW bus. I’d take it in a heartbeat. And name it Good Tires.