We got an early start for the 2012 WVO Roadtrip. We left Los Angeles around 8pm and drove through the night to Las Cruces NM. It was July, so it was exceedingly hot. Even in the middle of the night, Arizona and New Mexico was over 90 and 100 degrees. I remember pulling over near Phoenix to fill up the veggie tank, and our Air Conditioning wasn’t working well. I opened my window to see if it was warm outside, and boy it was. It was like feeling the hot wind of a hair dryer.
Eventually we got to Las Cruces and headed north. The tires must not have liked all the heat, because near Socorro we felt an unnerving vibration from the back. We thought maybe it was a bad bearing (like what happened to the Passat in Scranton in 2011), but as we examined the tire, it was clear we had a bulge. We limped the Jetta to the nearby town, found a shop, and they set us up with a new tire. Back on the road in an hour.