​New Harmony Drive Home 06/28

The Friday drive home day was again hot but beautiful as the three couples started the day with breakfast at the Red Geranium restaurant. This is where a breakfast buffet will be served for the group in the Fall. For Steve & Mary the morning actually started with a bit of Corvette clean up as they had unfortunately had parked under a birds nest, but unfortunately that was not the worst part of the day. After checking out a few more New Harmony sights including the visitors center where we found the water had been up to the parking lot since March. The group decided to head to Vincennes by going into Illinois and up route 1. This was going along fine until Steve radioed that he had a low tire warning and soon pulled over to check things out. Once stopped and confirming the low tire was the right front. Mary then found that we were under 4 miles from a Neal tire store in Lawrenceville IL. That would later turn out to be important. Since the C7 had run-flats they slowly proceeded there and inquired about having it checked out and repaired. It was quickly noted that it had a cut by the rim and could not be repaired and were soon told that there were no replacements anywhere in the area. With that in mind Bill called Levi at Discount Tire in Indy who also said that he only had an all season in stock for the front, not a summer tire to replace the original one. At that point they called Bob Young to see if he had any spares at home. Of course he did, not only used ones, he even had two new ones! In the mean time Steve was attempting to get a rental car lined up and thought he did in nearby Vincennes. A plan was formed that Bob would load up the tires and head towards Terre Haute while Bill took Steve to Enterprise in Vincennes, with Steve then heading to meet Bob. Bill took Steve to the rental store leaving Mary and Erika at the tire store. Once there they were told that in fact there were no cars to rent as Steve had been talking to a national and not local phone operator. They were very helpful though and lined up a rental in Terre Haute. The two soon headed North to get a vehicle and meet Bob. While on the way Steve got a call from Mary that he had left his I-Pad at New Harmony Inn, so soon our third couple of John & Marg were heading back to pick it up and then head home from there. Also during all of this there was the time crunch of Neal's closing at 5 local Central time. This worked in everyone's favor as Bob got to Terre Haute at 4:45 Eastern time and the tires were quickly loaded into the truck Steve had rented and on their way back to Illinois. They arrive at 4:04 which gave the shops crew plenty of time to make the swap on both tires. Bob had shown an interest in getting the 'good' used tire for his collection, so it was soon loaded in the trunk of the convertible C7 along with the overnight luggage. Once back on the road the two couples and three vehicles headed to Terre Haute to drop off the rental and then they decided to also have dinner there before heading back to Carmel. It was a long but very memorable day for the Corvette Indy members that wanted to make sure that everything turned out all right for the crippled Corvette, including a member who was not even on the trip and made a super effort to help out. Again thanks to Bob Young a super member.
Be sure to read Marg's anecdote Four Disasters and a Miracle for a great recount of the day.

New Harmony Pre-Run