We went out for a late breakfast (brunch?) and while inside it started to rain. When it came time to leave I told Nancy to wait by the door and I'd go get the car and bring it around for her. Figured it was worth a few extra points!
The area in front by the door is a long narrow one way driveway for handicappers so the plan was to just pull up, load up, and back up out of there. As I'm backing out, the three lane street going past is suddenly like the Indy 500, then I see an opening and I scoot backwards the last few feet and BANG...the left front wheel drops into a chuck hole on my left...right next to a fire hydrant. I try to extricate myself and every time the car moved, so did the hydrant. I got out to take a look...the chuck hole was like the Grand Canyon and my car in 2-wheel drive wasn't cutting it. In front the hole was up against the sidewalk, in back was the curb, in the middle was my wheel in the hole well over 12" deep surrounded by sharp edged cement of sidewalk and curb. I straightened the wheels so as to not press against the hydrant, put it in 4-wheel drive and out it came on the second try...hydrant still in one piece. I do not have replacement hydrants in my budget, including the labor cost to the city of De Pere plus the water charge. Not to mention damage to my car with a hydrant blasting up into the engine compartment. It did ruin my left front tire which TireRack had a replacement for, came out of the mess with a tennis ball size bulge on the sidewall. In the end, it cost me $162 for the tire and $22 for mounting which was done at Discount Tire, they now apparently are owned by the same company as TireRack so the mounting was done without any issue over where I bought it. The tech that did the tire swap took one look at the bulge and asked how far I came, when I told him(about 12 miles) he said "man, you got some balls...brass ones." Told him "no, at my age they're just atrophied."
