A roadtrip to the Pocono's

Stacey had been planning this for over a month. She thought it would be nice to head to the Poconos for the Labor Day weekend.

If you're not familiar with the Poconos, it's a area in Pennsylvania that is a vacation mecca for the Northeast. I like it better than Upstate New York, largely because the water is better. Otherwise, it's about the same.

So Stacey and I met up after work on Friday and headed out at around 6:30. That was a little later than I wanted, but at least the rain from hurricane Ernesto hadn't set in yet. Soon enough the rain did catch up with us and we were caught in traffic trying to escape New York City.

We finally got past the George Washington Bridge and along Interstate 80 in New Jersey before the sun went down. Light rain accompanied us. By 8:15 we were less then 40 miles from the Delaware Water Gap when things went wrong. I noticed a car on the median up ahead with the flashers going.

*BANG!!!*

There was a flash of sparks. The car was filled with smoke. There was something by my right shoulder. Stacey was screaming that we had a blow-out.

I insisted that we didn't have a tire blow-out. I was more concerned with the smoke. That's when I noticed that the thing by my shoulder was the side airbag. I flipped on the hazard lights.

"The side airbag deployed," I stated while rolling down the window a little to let the smoke out, "I'll pull over to figure this out."

After I pulled the car off the road and at a good safe distance away, I grabbed a flashlight and checked to see what happened. I could see that the new front driver's side rim and tire were both damaged but holding air. That was a plus. The rear driver's side tire was blown out with a hole in the sidewall big enough to fit my finger into. Very bad. I opened the trunk to get to the spare. We were on our way for a weekend getaway, the trunk was full and the spare was ALL THE WAY on the bottom. I folded down the back seat and moved everything forward.

As I was getting ready to change the tire, a NJ State Highway Trooper pulled up to check in with us. We told him what happened. He had a look at the deployed side airbag. "Never seen that happen before," he commented, seeing the flacid sack that had earlier burst out through the side of my seat. He wrote up an accident report and sat there with his headlights on me to make my life easier, while making me more visible to passing motorists.

• NOTE: While we were stuck, there were two other motorists who were also victims of blow-outs from the same pothole. It must've been like a tank trap!

Once the car was somewhat road worthy and the trooper handed me my literature on how to get a copy of his report, I staggered the car onto the road and off I80 at the first exit. It appeared to be Arlington. There was gas station at the base of the ramp that we stopped at to catch our wits about us. The shop was closed. Of course it was, it was already 9:15. No one would be open at 9:15 on a Friday on a holiday weekend. The attendant told us where we could find an STS Tire, which was certainly closed at this hour, but should've been open the next morning. Also down the road was the Roxbury Motel. It was cheap, and was a roof over our heads for the night.

We staggered over. The place seemed okay from our first glance. Hell, as long it was shelter from the rain, we were happy. But once we got our key and went into the room, we started having doubts. The walls were all a uniform white. The prints were screwed into he walls. One looked like it had a blood splatter across the bottom corner. Not reassuring. The bathroom was very old. Pink tiles with very stained grout. To make it complete, there was a solitary beercap sitting in the middle of the bathroom floor. Stacey was thorougly creeped out by the place, and even referred to it as the Bates Motel.

I didn't care. I was cold and soaked to the bone. I took a hot shower and knocked out. I awoke early the next morning and took stock of what we had:

1. badly damaged rim with tire, but holding air
2. relatively undamaged rim with blown tire.
3. two good matching rims and tires on the passenger side.
4. doughnut spare.

Well, I figured, this should be enough to get us someplace. We head to STS before 8AM. They took care of us immediately, as the place was empty. They notified us that the couldn't work with the damaged rim. But they could mount a tire on the rim with the blown tire. From there were moved and rotated tires to allow for optimal driving conditions. Within a half hour we were after they finished at STS, we were pulling into the parking lot of the motel we were staying at in the Poconos. We were that close!

Once we got our room, we sorted out my trunk and got that back together. I rolled up the airbag and covered the seat with a grey t-shirt so I don't have to look at the carnage. Then for the rest of the weekend we didn't do much else but shop, eat, sleep and relax.

We were back home by Monday afternoon. The rest of the trip was uneventful. No traffic until we reached the Cross Bronx in NY. Figures.

All I have left now is, I have to figure out what to do about the airbag, and hot to get rid of the code for it in the dash. I've read some articles on the net, like grounding the signal at the OBD2 connector or just wait for 255 ignition clicks to self clear. Either way, I know this will take some further research. I also have to decide if I even want it anymore. It seemed to be placed in a rather absurd location and I can't figure out how it can possibly help in an impact. We'll see.