2022-07-08 45 -121

Location

In a motel parking lot in The Dalles.

Participants

Expedition

At this point, we had visited 2022-07-08 45 -120 and 2022-07-08 44 -120 and 2022-07-08 44 -121, and although not necessarily on the most direct route home, we were undeniably heading in the right direction. You can imagine that our spirits were pretty high driving out of Madras, past the "Next Gas 96 Miles" sign. Yes, we had enough gas.

Over the high desert hills we drove with the busy industrial traffic of US 97, through the poorly designed and potentially lethal intersection with US 197 and turning off onto that much quieter road. There were grand views in every direction in the late-afternoon light, and on we drove in the road-trip reverie until about 45.060775 N, -121.026410 W, where suddenly

ka-BLAM!!! GRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Mrs.5000 said something to the effect of: "Gosh, that loud noise was alarming! Can you explain it?"

I said something along the lines of: "I fear we have may have lost a tire! I will attempt to bring the vehicle to a controlled stop."

So, one controlled stop later, there we were on the narrow shoulder of a remote, thinly trafficked rural highway in late afternoon with the left rear tire in tatters, and I was thinking "cool, this will definitely count as a 'Train Wreck' consolation prize. Is that weird?

OK, so, this isn't the first time that Mrs. and I have had a flat tire in the pursuit of adventure -- see 2011-07-16 44 -119 -- but since it seemed unlikely that we'd be struck twice by the lightning of friendly mechanics who enjoy changing tires happening by, we had to deal with it ourselves this time. Which, I mean, people have been doing it for generations. It's a little daunting, but it isn't rocket science. We got out the manual and the spare tire kit, and figured it out.

The modern spare tire, I now know, is engineered to be reliable for 50 to 70 miles, and we were about 60 miles from the Dalles. There was a gas station at charming Maupin (that sign outside of Madras isn't exactly wrong, but it's only true for US 97 itself) where the gentlemen on staff allowed that we'd be likely to make it to The Dalles, so -- moving slow and with the hazard lights on -- we traversed the last 40 miles to relative civilization. We arrived too late to get the tire repaired until the next morning, so there was nothing to be done but... proceed to the hashpoint.

All I had remembered about this one was that it would be in a parking lot, so it was kind of funny that, here we were, needing a place to stay for the night, and the hashpoint was at the very entrance to a motel! What fate! What destiny! So, did the obvious, and -- no. We didn't. We stayed at a somewhat cheaper place a few blocks away.

FOOTNOTE: In the same way that 2022-07-08 45 -120 was quite close to 2019-06-05 45 -120, this hashpoint was of course precisely as close to 2019-06-05 45 -121, so I was able to say "that's the sign where I took the pictures and the hitchhiker thought I'd stopped for him...." So that was fun.

POSTSCRIPT: The good people of Les Schwab Tire's The Dalles branch opened at 8:00, had the car up on the lift at 8:03, and had us off and on our way before we could finish the Times crossword. And we're pretty good at crossword puzzles. We made it home and resumed non-geohashing adventures.