It was a lovely weekend. As all my weekends are down south. I was full of coffee and croissant and almost home. Made great time -- usually I had to rush into work directly from the car ride, but it looked like I'd have a half hour to chill out, read /msgs and spam. Nice.
There's a section of I-5 going into Seattle where everyone speeds up. After the I-405/I-5 interchange, the crowd of cars that was averaging a little over 60 mph start going 75. It's pretty weird. Not to be one to go against the crowd's wishes, I keep up. Plus, I'm not so paranoid about speeding when everyone else is with me. Of course, there's always someone that decides to enforce the 60 mph posted speed limit; this time it was a red sedan. So I, along with the rest of the people in my group, start passing the person. My attention while passing someone shifts from the 12-seconds ahead scanning to a more local, "who the heck is around me and where are they going," awareness. Looked good, so I put the car into the middle lane.
The middle lane had a rake in it.
One of those stiff steel rakes.
My car passed over the rake.
I heard two thumps.
My car then started to list.
Both left tires, popped.
Got towed ($90), got two new tires ($80). Got no more money in the checking account.
Hell.