Alaskan Road Rules, conclusion
It happened like this.
Tires are an important part of life in Alaska. With all the snow, ice, gravel, and combinations of the three, traction can be a problem. In the summer, you have to worry about driving on loose gravel roads. In the winter you need to be able to drive on snow and ice.
Here in California, I’ve seen tires advertised as “winter tires.” Okay, whatever. That might help on wet concrete, but icy wet concrete takes something a little stronger. In Alaska, we pay technicians to stud our tires. That means taking hot metal plugs and melting them into the rubber of the tire. The process leaves your tires with a double ring of little metal rods poking out. These studs really grab into the ice snow and keep you straight on the road.
In the summer, those metal studs will tear up the bare pavement. In fact, it’s illegal to drive with studded tires after the snow is gone. You can get a ticket.
Most people solve this problem by having two sets of tires. Houses all around my neighborhood had sets of four tires propped up against the side.
My family, however, did not indulge in this luxury. Most years, we did not indulge in the luxury of studs in the tires. Our parents would drive on mostly bald tires. When we lost control on the roads, us kids would rate the degrees of the turn. “That was a good 180,”we’d yell out. “OOOH! A whole 360 degree turn!” 90 degree fishtails were a disappointment--they got us excited initially, but then didn’t follow through with their potential
The winter I was 15 we did have studded tires. I don’t remember why; perhaps there was a sale. Driving that winter was less exciting. My mom really enjoyed them.
But summer follows winter, and we found ourselves in the position of having illegally studded tires. If we could barely afford to have the tires studded in fall, we definitely could not afford to buy an entire new set in spring. Neither could we afford to pay a ticket for driving studded tires in summer.
“Can we have them taken out?” Mom wondered.
“I guess we can ask.” Dad was doubtful.
My brother Mark had a solution: “We can take them out ourselves!”
No one was sure if that was possible, so we had to go check. Mark armed himself with pliers and got halfway under the trunk to get at the tire. Digging deep into the rubber, he got a grip on the metal rod. Pulling and worrying it back and forth, he ripped out the stud and its coin-shaped base.
He flourished it. “I did it! See?”
Well, what do you know? It could be done.
But now Mark had signed himself up to rip the rest of them out. Chris got another pair of pliers and helped him. They jacked up the car, and took the tires off one at a time. It took bracing and pulling room to do this effectively. They were in hurry, so they didn’t really tighten the lug nuts between changes.
I watched from the front steps. On the hard packed dirt of our driveway, my brothers were performing some kind of dental exercise on rubber wheels. The jacked-up car looked mysterious and interesting.
“Why do you have firewood in front of the wheels on the car?” I asked Mark.
“That’s a block.”
“Oh,” I said without comprehension. He was making huge grimaces as he pulled the pliers back and forth to get the stud. “You guys are nuts,” I said. “It’s gonna take forever to get all those out.”
“No it’s not! Look, I have another one already.” He held up the pliers to show me the plug.
He couldn’t stand the fact that I didn’t have faith in his genius method of de-studding the car. Mark insisted that I pull one out myself. It took some doing. He advised me on technique, and as I pulled back and forth on the metal I could see the hole it left in the rubber. The metal seemed to go deep into the tire.
“Will this make the tire pop?” I asked.
“Huh!” Mark said with surprise. He hadn’t thought of that.
We didn’t know if the tires would pop with the studs removed, but we did not that we would get a ticket with them on. They had to go.
I was just happy that I didn’t have to take them out. I took refuge in being the only daughter. This was a male thing, just like chopping the firewood in winter. I got out of that chore too.
I left them to it, and wandered off to read something.
Mom was really relieved when they were done. Now she didn’t have to worry about being stopped by a state trooper. As soon as they were done, she wanted to go out and run some errands. I wasn’t busy so I came along.
It was a nice sunny day in late June. Mom was singing and tapping the steering wheel. I stared out the window at the leafy trees. Then we heard a weird sound.
What’s that? We listened carefully for a while longer. It seemed like a rattley buzz. It was kind of loud.
“I’d better stop and check this out,” Mom said. She opened the hood. Everything seemed normal. She looked at the tires. They seemed fully inflated. We didn’t know what else to do so we got back in the car and kept going.
The sound was still there, but we didn’t know what to do about it. We continued to muse to each other what it might be, and comment about its tone and musicality. But as we rounded the corner to the store, everything happened.
We were thrown forward as the car skidded to a halt. I heard a huge screeching noise and the car lurch downward on my side. Mom instantly started shouting prayers in tongues. Bracing myself against the dashboard I thought, Why is Mom stopping so fast? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something bouncing away to my right.
It seemed like a long time before the car came to a complete stop. Mom was making little shrieky noises in between deep panicky breaths. I was staring straight at her, looking for some explanation.
“Oh! OH! Oh my goodness! Are you okay?” she grabbed my arm.
“I’m fine, Mom. What happened?”
As soon as she could gather herself together we got out of the car. Of course, as soon as I got out of the car, I noticed the right front tire was gone.
“Mom! Look at this!”
She came around and looked. “Where’s the tire?” she said, looking around like it had disintegrated.
I suddenly remembered that bouncing object I had seen before. Oh, that must have been the tire leaving the car. I ran off to get it and rolled it back.
I set it next to the car. It was a sight to see. The hood was angled down towards the pavement, and the shiny circle of the brake pad was shaved flat on the bottom.
“Oh no,” Mom said. “This is gonna be expensive.”
“It’s totally flat on the bottom.” I said.
Mom sighed. “This is gonna be really expensive.”
Fortunately, we were on a main road and there was a service station nearby. We walked over there and asked them to come tow our car in and see what needed to be fixed. While they were getting the car, Mom made some calls home to Dad.
Those mechanics were real Alaska gems. They were really nice. I hadn’t been in a service station like that before. Anytime we needed someone to work on our incredibly used cars, we called a friend to help us out. So I was looking at all the places where black grease collects in a service station.
“Hey, this ain’t so bad,” the guys told mom. “You can drive on this. No problem.”
Mom’s relief was visible. Apparently, if we had skidded the brake pad down any further it would have been dangerous, but as it was we were dandy. They sold us some lug nuts, but threw in the tow job for free.
Mom thanked them again and again, and we finally got back to our errands.