Avoid Mountain Home, Idaho

Well, the whole idea sounded pretty good. In order to save the family a bit of money, I was to fly home to Vancouver for the weekend, stay a day, and then drive back our 1989 Honda Accord "Ghetto" to Provo with my sister as my co-captain. It was a brilliant idea, and even more brilliant that I was finally going to have a car of my own to drive around here at school. Until about 8 hours into our adventure we reached the outskirts of a town called Mountain Home. I don't know what they put on their highways but whatever it was, it ripped my back passenger side tire a new one.

Here's me attempting to put on the spare:



And the lovely damage that I-84 did:


After realizing that someone bolted on the tire ridiculously too tight, we called AAA to come bail us out. The nice/creepy tow truck driver who changed our tire told us we should probably stay the night in Mountain Home and not drive on the spare another 400 miles to Provo. He told us about a little motel on the side of the road we should stay at and guided us to it. As we saw what could of potentially been our final resting place, we decided the Best Western would probably be better. BUT, Mountain Home got us again by deciding to have an air show in town and selling out every hotel room. So we took a chance on our spare and drove 80 miles to Twin Falls, where we stayed comfortably in the Twin Falls Best Western. In the morning as we waited for Sears Auto Center to open up we visited the new Twin Falls LDS Temple, which is quite beautiful.



After a long wait at Sears we were finally back on the road. We got to SLC about 3 hours before Brittany's flight and so I didn't even get to show her my new pad, but she'll be back I'm sure.

Overall, I think with the plane tickets, the new paint job and stereo in the "Ghetto", the replacement tire, the gas money, the hotel room, and the time it took for the whole adventure, we probably saved about $10 by having me drive home and get the car. But, as I learned last week from Kearl in Econ 110, the marginal costs (about 1000) were less than the marginal benefits (about 1500) and so it was a rational decision to bring the car down. Next time though, I think I'm gonna avoid Mountain Home, Idaho. There just isn't anything good there.