Finally getting the hang of this

Last year around this time, it started to rain. I drive the Klamath "River Road" to and from work everyday, and it's notoriously a very unforgiving road... for several reasons. It's very windy (winding?- like squiggly), there's always deer in the road, large logging trucks hauling butt to make as many trips as they can and a very good chance that if you go off the road, you're taking a large drop into a fast moving and very cold river. It's also very steep and rocky above the road so every time it rains, there are rocks in the road. Sometimes it becomes a very large slide and closes the road, most of the time it's just a few rocks in the road large enough to put a hole in your tire. And the road is too curvy to get a glimpse of the rocks before it's too late.

The year before last year I left the gym and was driving to work when I came up on a CalTrans vehicle- something like a plow except more for rocks. He pulled over for me and let me pass since he was going to have to drive fairly slow. I continued on and came up on a pile of rocks, too fast to stop and on a curve so I couldn't get out of my lane to go around them. I went over them at about 40 miles per hour. Not long after, my steering started to feel funny until it was getting hard to steer. I pulled over and discovered a flat tire. Ugh. The rock remover guy drove past me several minutes later. The guys at work laughed.

This year, driving to work to meet up for a fire, I drove over a rock and the air let out of my tire so slowly that I made it work and let it sit there flat for a couple weeks before coming back from the fire and having to fix it.

This morning I was driving to work after leaving the gym, and due to the rain, had left myself plenty of time to get to work. Up ahead I saw flashing yellow lights....it was the rock remover guy! By the way, I think it's the same set up that removes dead deer from the road, we've had a lot of those this week. I slowed down and stayed well behind so as not to encourage him to pull over and let me by. He drove in front of me at about 30mph (speed limit is 55) for about 10 miles before going off in another direction, scraping rocks out of the way for me. It was very nice of him, and I didn't have to change a tire.

I'm starting to get this. If I recall correctly, I have had 3 flat tires in the 3 years I have lived here, all caused by rocks on the river road.