Ireland: The Story of the Exploding Tire

By Patty Wilber

The Irish drive on the left side of the road and the driver’s seat is on the right (oops I said left at first…) side of the car.  This is a bit disorienting after a lifetime of driving on the right, and Jim and I both tended to drift farther left in the lane (and the edge of the road) than necessary. The non-highway roads ranged from one lane in a lot of places to barely two lanes.

As we headed towards Galway, Jim hit a rock with the left front tire as he tried to move over a bit on one of the barely two-lane roads to allow a car to whiz by. I had nailed at least two curbs with the left front tire, myself, during my adventures earlier in the week!

Not long afterward, an attractive gas station/shop appeared and I suggested we stop for gas.  Jim said he was going to wait until Galway. I opined that this place looked really easy to access and we were pretty low on fuel, so Jim decided to stop.

As we gassed up, we looked at the tire.

It had a huge bubble in it!

We moved the car to a parking spot near the convenient picnic tables, and watched as the bubble expanded and the tire blew!

Well! That was lucky!  Just think if it had gone while we were driving on one of the tiny roads!

Our phones did not want to call out at this location (even though they worked perfectly in Limerick), so the station attendant allowed us to use his phone to call the rental company (Budget) and Budget arranged for a mobile tire company to come.  Jim’s phone was happy to accept calls and we learned it would be about 40 minutes until the tire guy could arrive.

Lucky for us again!  There was a 24/7 Launderette in the parking lot! We did our laundry while we waited! Amber spearheaded the effort!

As I’d mentioned, there were picnic tables and it was a really nice day, so we ate our smoked salmon, brown bread, and cheese we’d found at the Burren Smokehouse in Lisdoonvarna in the morning and had a picnic while the clothes washed and the tire guy made his way to us!

Then the tire guy showed up, and fixed our tire.

We finished folding our clothes, packed up the remains of our picnic and headed to the Lisdonaugh Estate for a two-night stay!

They breed Connemara Ponies there, it turns out.

The grounds of the Lisdonaugh estate, from their website.

And that is it for the blog and Ireland! Next week we will be back to stories in New Mexico, if we have not washed away by then in the monsoonal torrential downpours!