Misadventures in South Carolina

Okay, so there was at least one thing with my brother's visit that i was going to have to relate (with apologies, again, for the delay). With my brother being here for our birthday on the 25th April (we have the same birthday, albeit three years apart), i decided to take the day off work and we went for a ride up the road to Myrtle Beach - about 90 mins away, as my brother had a thing for wanting to play miniature golf and apparently Myrtle Beach has about 50 of the damn courses. All was going well, we went for a walk on the beach, had something to eat, played a round of golf (my brother lost :-) ) and then headed back, as we were going out for dinner and drinks that evening. Suffice to say, we ended up taking a wrong turn in Georgetown and on highway 17A instead of highway 17 - but all was not lost as we were still going in the right direction. And then we got a flat tyre. Now, not one to stress, i knew i had a spare in the back, and also a jack but had overlooked that fact that we didn't have a tyre wrench. Having turned down help from a truck that had stopped to ask if we were okay (on account of the rather redneck-y appearance of the inhabitants), we had no other choice but to flag someone down.

Fortunately, we were lucky - the gentleman in question was very helpful - given we were stuck in the middle of nowhere (a few minutes before i had commented on how i would like the peace of living out there, but not the 'being so far from everything'). Anyways, we hoisted the car, loosened the nuts and...the wheel wouldn't come off. So, i used the man's phone (mine had no battery!) to call my insurance recovery who said they would help, and then we decided to move the car off the road more (as my sister-in-law Wendy had suggested a while back). Whereupon the wheel loosened. Thus, not wanting to wait 45 mins for recovery, we swapped the wheel (the spare had low air) and headed back up the road to put some air in, then back to Georgetown - where they were unable to repair and couldn't replace the tire. Thus, we drove back the 60 miles to Charleston on the spare (at no more than 50 mph). In the end we were only two hours late and had managed to rebook the restaurant and let everyone know the time change (by quick calls and text messages!). The most amusing thing of the whole event was that my brother was convinced we were about to be set upon by banjo twanging South Carolinians a la 'Deliverance'. Suffice to say, i told him that SC folk don't usually play the bango...