Civil War travel trials

By Ed Piper

The last day of our recent trip to visit Charleston and Savannah Civil War and Southern culture sites (March 8-20, 2018) ended up being more exciting than we hoped for.

A left rear tire on our rented Hyundai Sonata, with a slow leak, became a terror by late afternoon as we speeded on the final leg of our journey from Atlanta back to our starting point at Charleston, South Carolina, where we would take our flight home the next morning.

I watched in increasing fascination and mini-horror as the LED display on the car's dash, indicating the pressure in each of the tires, remained at 44 or 45 for each of the other tires, but every five or 10 minutes by 3:30 or 4 p.m. dropping the left rear pressure to 36, then 35, and on.

Wanting to catch a last bite of Southern cuisine at Magnolias, a restaurant we went to for lunch on our first day a week and a half before, we raced into the French Quarter of Charleston. Dianna was able to secure a table for us in a room in the back, which had a neat, quaint setting.

Meanwhile, I negotiated the downtown parking situation near the Battery, the area facing the famous harbor where the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861.

When we returned to our rental car after a scrumptious meal (identical to what I ordered our first day at Magnolias: pulled pork, mac and cheese, collard greens, also a decadent pecan brownie we shared), the PSI in the offending tire had dropped even more. This was going to be a problem, because now the tire wasn't leaking slowly. Apparently, the energy generated by our speed through the afternoon from Atlanta (a five-hour drive) had elevated the pressure inside the tire, or, I'm thinking now, whatever was stuck in the tire causing the leak was now not keeping its finger in the figurative dike as well.

I advised Dianna, elevating her blood pressure, I'm sure. We were both tired from a long day, we were at the end our trip, and we had the challenge of finding our hotel and getting to the Charleston airport early the next morning for our 7:23 a.m. flight.

Someone had told Dianna there was a Kangaroo gas station down the street. We found it. We located the tire inflating machine. I went inside the convenience store to ask if the pump was reliable. The clerk said yes. A young man who was inside paying for something else heard me and helpfully suggested using a can of the substance you spray in the stem to plug small leaks. "Do you have a can of it?" he asked. I said no.

He followed me out the door, I thought, but as I returned to the tire pump across the parking lot, I couldn't spot him.

The machine said it took credit cards. My credit card wasn't working. Dianna had some quarters, but I wanted to make the credit card work if we could--we had already added air to the tire three times previously during our two-week trip, so if we had an emergency with low inflation leaving the gas station, her change might come in handy later. Or if we needed more change than we had, we wouldn't have to go scrambling for more coins.

A woman nearby, like the young man, was very helpful. The time of day was already late afternoon, and it was going to get dark eventually. Dianna: "We're going to have to sleep at the airport." I said, "No, we won't. We will solve this."

The woman encouraged me to go ahead and use the coins. It worked. I couldn't change the automatic setting for the pump above 32 PSI. The other tires were at 44 to 47 PSI pressure, so I wanted to pump the bad tire up to 48 or 50 if I could, then we would make a dash to the airport for a replacement car.

In between all of this, the young man had made his appearance again to inform me he didn't have a can of the leak-sealer in his car. I mentioned we had a rental car. He: "Then let the rental agency take care of it."

With his suggestion, my plan changed from filling the tire and making our way to our hotel, 10 miles south, where I could call a tow truck or find another way to have the tire patched, to skedaddling to the airport 12 miles away and exchanging cars.

On Google maps, my cell phone told me the distance to the airport.

The helpful lady tapped the button setting the machine's tire pressure and we got the setting up to 48. Achieved.

Both people, by the way, were African-Americans, which we noted. We found a good, if not ideal, camaraderie throughout our trip with people of different races and cultures. It was very encouraging after recent incidents of racial tension and violence in the news.

Leaky tire filled temporarily, we barrelled toward Charleston International Airport, Google directions in hand.

The LED indicator showed 47, then 46, but slowly. The drop in pressure in the bad tire wasn't precipitous, as it had been at the end of our Atlanta-Charleston jaunt, or on our nervous short drive from Magnolias to Kangaroo. The air in the tire was cooler in temperature? It had dropped to a low of 17 or less before the reinflation.

We pulled into Enterprise car rental's return lot just outside the airport terminal. We parked. We had made it without getting stuck in the dark on the side of the highway. Thank God.

We had an Alamo rental, but Alamo closes at 3 p.m., so arriving and now, we dealt both times with Enterprise, which owns Alamo. (National is part of the same megacorporation.)

The gentleman at the counter was very nice, helpful, as was the man attending cars outside. The former asked me if a truck was okay. I asked, "Where would we put our luggage?" He then said, "I have two Ford Fiestas." My mother had had one, and I had bought it from her, the last car she owned. I knew, though 6'5", I could get into it. I said, "Yes, that will work."

So, within a few minutes, we were loaded in our new rental car--one large suitcase turned on its side to fit in the small back seat, the other in the tiny trunk--and on our way to our hotel.

We slept from 10 p.m. (fitfully?) to 4:08 a.m., when I woke up and saw the time and said to Dianna, "Hun, it's 4:08. We need to get going." We checked out of our hotel (without breakfast, which didn't open until 6 a.m.) by 5:25.