And I did. Today on my way to work as I reached the High Street overpass on 880-south, the rear, driver’s side wheel fell of the car as I was doing about 70 mph. I had heard a “clunk” like a nut falling off about a minute before and I had just rolled up the window to listen for further sounds. I thought it was coming from the drive line, so I was paying close attention to it when the back end of the car hit the ground. Sparks shot everywhere in my rear view mirror as I watched my wheel roll past me in the fast lane, heading south at a high rate of speed never to be seen again.

The car was surprisingly drivable and I was able to move to the far right lane and into the shoulder. Everyone around me had slowed way down and gave me ample room. I called 911 (I think they may know me by now) and waited for the Highway Service Patrol to pick me off the road. They towed me down to 98th Ave and I called Dr. Kwan again at Beyond2. As he always does, he started to work his magic and found a tow truck that could take my car to Burlingame.

I’m still not exactly sure what happened. The wheel is gone, despite me looking for it for quite awhile under the bridge and along the freeway. The brake drum is gone. The hub is gone. It looks like the main nut and cotter pin fell off and the hub worked its way off the axle. The damage looks isolated to the wheel, and some paint on the wheel well. Of course replacing the wheel, tire, breaks, etc. won’t be cheap. We’ll see what Kwan has to say this afternoon.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 11:49 am and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.