Literal Needles, Tucumcari, and Flying Bits of Rubber

Another day on the books.  The day was relatively uneventful.  I already mentioned part of our initial journey to Needles.  I forgot to note that on our way out of Barstow to Needles, something in Allyssa's suitcase stabbed the heck out of my finger.  Gashed it, even.  Later, I come to find out there was a literal sewing needle sticking out of her suitcase.  Going to Needles -  get stabbed by sewing needle on the way.  Interesting coincidence.

There was only one accident on the road today, and we were nowhere near when it happened.  It was just outside of Flagstaff, and must have been a semi or something.  By the time we got to it, it had cleared - but it mangled traffic and slowed us down by something like 40 minutes.  Allyssa drove most of the way through Arizona.

Albuquerque was beautiful.  It's definitely way more scenic approaching from the west, I think.  I wish we could have stopped, but we had a date with Tucumcari.

At about 8:30, something happened just outside of Santa Rosa.  I still don't know what it was, but something was banging around in the wheel well.  Almost like that sound that happens when you're driving over wet asphalt - but the asphalt wasn't wet, and we were driving at about 75 miles per hour.  And there was nothing else in the road.

We exited in Santa Rosa, and I inspected the wheels and undercarriage.  Nothing seemed out of place.  The only thing I did notice is that one tire felt rougher than the others.  This seemed odd.  My working theory is that the tire was underinflated before we got the car, and that there were possibly flying bits of rubber from structural stress on the tire.  This seems bad.  I took an educated guess on the "hot" pressure of the tire and filled it up, and then we took off again.  The sound stopped.  So I'm conflicted.  Maybe airing up the tire fixed the issue.  Maybe I was hearing pieces of tiny gravel that we couldn't see.  I wasn't experiencing any kind of steering issues, so I'm actually not inclined to think it was the tire.  But airing up the tire a few psi did seem to make the sound stop.

We'll see what tomorrow holds.

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