Funny thing, as I awoke, my car was not the 1st thing I thought about, it was Mama Espinoza's Lobster burrito; I wanted another one! Man, that was good! Well, back to reality, I needed a plan: a shower, breakfast and then find a new tire, in that order.
As it turned out there were two "tire" shops in town. After taking care of priorities 1 and 2, you guessed it, another amazing Lobster Burrito, I set out to find a new tire. Well, this proved to be much more difficult than you would imagine. After going to both shops, I discovered that, not only did neither shop have my exact tire, a run-flat, 225R45-17, but neither one had anything even remotely close.
I guess if I was driving a 20 year old Chevy, each establishment would have had 20 tires to chose from, but good or bad, on the Baja, Serendipity is a unique beast, with even more unique tires. Even though I didn't want to drive any further, I was forced to drive to the next closest town north, San Quintin.
I did find a fairly big tire shop in San Quintin. The manager, Jesús González, tried in vain to find a tire, making calls all over the Baja peninsula and even called a BMW dealer on mainland Mexico. On the peninsula, Jesús found only one even remotely close, it was a 215R45-17 and was in Enseneda, this would have sufficed to get me safely to San Diego, about 200 miles north, but it certainly would not prudently allow me to get all the way down to Cabo and back which I fully intented to do.
Then BMW called back and had two tires on the mainland, but there were at least 3 problems with this scearnio, 1) the tires were not Run-Flat, 2) it would take approximately 2 days to get them and 3) the cost was about $600/tire (compared to about $200 in the US), yikes! Obviously, this was not a reasonable option. While this was going on, I called a Firestone Dealer in San Diego to see about getting the correct tires. I was informed that I could indeed purchase the exact tires I needed and ordered 2 immediately. Hallelujah!
Now I just had to get to San Diego, not a small feat, at this point, 200 miles seemed like 2000, but at least there was possibly a light at the end of the tunnel. After waiting around most of the day and not a prayer of a tire, I decided to drive slowly back to San Diego. Now, let me just say, I would never have attempted this if there were any alternative, but it didn't seem there was. And please folks, don't try this at home.
Surprisingly, the tire seemed fine. As recommended, I kept the speed at about 50 MPH. That was one of the longest afternoon into evenings ever. For one thing, I usually drive about 30 MPH faster and also, because the tire was impaired, I was sure any minute that the tire would peel right off the wheel and leave me stranded, truly in the middle of nowhere, hep me! As you may have guessed, since I'm writing about this, I did, in fact make it back to San Diego with no problems, at about 1am. Checked into a local hotel and passed out