The AWOL Tire

One Monday morning, my mom, my sisters, and I, decided to drive out to an orphanage in the middle of nowhere, about two to three hours away from Tegucigalpa. This was last year sometime, so we lived in Santa Lucia so it took longer to get there than if we lived in the city. We were driving along, singing and happy. My mom started hearing a clicking noise from our tire. However this was normal, we've heard that same noise a couple other times and we didn't think too much about it. As we come to a bridge that the Japanese built for Honduras, all of a sudden the car front tilts to the right and we girls yell at our mom, “There’s our tire!” Our tire was in front of us; it somehow came off the car and was rolling away at fifty mph!

It barely missed a house standing on the side of the highway and plummeted into the river below. My mom could only remember my dad telling her, “Don’t ride on the rim!” She expertly ‘drives’ or ‘handles’ the car without a front, right tire and crosses the bridge and pulls over. We get out and look at where our tire was. There is no tire, there is no rim! My mom was riding on the rotor! The rim left with the tire, the bolts had bent and broke somehow. We walked back across the bridge following how long mom drove on that rotor, there was a fine white line going all the way across the bridge and a meter or so before and after the bridge. This is one of those moments where we realized we could have died. We could have smashed into the house, the bridge itself, or the river several meters below the bridge.

We thanked God for keeping us safe and for helping my mom guide the car to a stop at the side of the road. After we got over the fact that our tire was gone, we called my dad to tell him what happened and to have him come and meet us along with the insurance people or tow truck or both or just something to help us from not being stranded. After we called my dad, we set out to find the tire; maybe we could put it back? We went down the hill, under some barbed wire and chain-link fence, to the river.  We searched for an hour or so and the tire was nowhere to be found. We searched down the river and up the river, we searched in the bushes on either side, it was gone! The people from the house were looking for it too, and one of the boys took off his shirt and pants to look underwater to see if it popped and sunk. It had disappeared! Eventually, my sisters and I gave up looking and sat on the side of the road singing, waiting for my dad to come. My mom was determined to find that tire, so she kept looking for a while and then came up to the highway waiting for my dad. My dad finally arrived and he was shocked at what happened.
He could not believe that the whole tire flew off and disappeared and he was amazed at how my mom was able to drive so far on the rotor. We ended up taking his car to continue on our journey to the orphanage, as was our whole purpose of going. He stayed with my brother, waiting for the insurance company to come with a tow truck or something. The tow truck came about thirty minutes or so after we left and the car was taken into a shop. We had a good day at the orphanage and as we drove back my mom looked out the window at the house by that bridge to see if they found the tire. That tire was never found! We have no clue where it went and how. If we pass by that spot we still try to see if we can see it anywhere, but to no avail. Our car was fixed and is now fine; we've never had another tire go AWOL after that. Maybe the others learned their lesson? Either way, we were safe; God protected us that day, quite awesomely.  This is one of those things that I think only happens in Honduras!

Goodbye, until next time!