flying would have been cheaper!

baby hates the car and cries as if her fingernails are being slowly ripped off with pliers. our strategy for the 6 hour drive down to philly was to leave around her nap time which is roughly 11am. this worked out perfectly - she fell asleep within 5 minutes of being in the car. unfortunately, we didn't even hit connecticut before she woke up. we stopped at our favorite exit somewhere in connecticut where there's a little shopping plaza with a mcd's and a borders. we had cheeseburgers and then tooled around the bookstore for about an hour. that was just enough time for baby to be willing to get back into the car seat. she was fine for a while, but once we got past ny and hit jersey, it was all downhill from there.

in order to avoid crying on the way home, we thought it would be a good idea to get on the road at baby's bed time. that way she would theoretically stay asleep and we'd be golden. nope! she fell asleep right away, but then she woke up only after 45 minutes of driving. the crying began immediately after and even worse, we hit jersey shore traffic. we were dead stopped for quite a while. oh boy. finally, the traffic cleared up and baby fell back asleep once we got to the george washington bridge. woo-hoo!! it was 10:30 pm and we were cruising along the henry hudson parkway. then, bam!!! shit! we hit a pothole! and normally, hitting a pothole wouldn't be such a big deal, but our car has those fancy low profile tires and once we felt the impact, we knew right away (from experience) something was wrong. we decided to pull over at the next exit just to take a look and see what was going on with the tire. sure enough, there was a big bubble on the side of the tire. last time this happened, we didn't notice the bubble right away, mainly because we didn't know that fancy tires and potholes were mortal enemies.

anyway, after pulling over on some random street, we see the bubble and call for roadside assistance. it's now 11pm and the guy shows up 15 minutes later and puts on the spare. once he gets the bad wheel off, we get a better picture of the damage. looks like we're going to need a new rim as well. our options are trying to get home on the spare, max speed 50mph. or, spend the night and get to the dealership first thing in the morning. we decided to spend the night. there were only two hotels in the area and the first one we went to had no vacancy. luckily, the second hotel we went to had space. by the time we got into the room, it was midnight. the room rate was $180 and we only spent 7 hours in it.

the next morning, we got up and hobbled over to the dealership and they got us all fixed up right away to the tune of $800. the whole rest of the ride home, we had our eyes peeled for anything that remotely looked like a pothole. i don't know why they put these tires on cars at all. it's like a woman wearing tiny stiletto heels...they look pretty, but they don't work on cobblestone! finally we got home around 12:30pm and although the trip home was a bit of an expensive adventure, we were glad to be home in one piece.