Quagmire on the Meadowbrook!

Alex Cackburn and several of his friends suffered quite a jolt the other day when his tire went flat on the highway. They had just merged onto the Meadowbrook Parkway when Cackburn drove his 2001 Ford Explorer over a beer bottle; which eventually caused the rear, driver-side tire to lose its air.
“We saw it there, and Joe and I were, like, so determined to crush that bottle,” Cackburn said on the phone. His other friends, Frank and Jerry, however, were not so eager. They both voiced their discomfort with putting the car in such unnecessary danger.
“We had time to get out of the way, it wasn’t an immediate threat or anything,” Frank explained.
Cackburn would not listen, though, for he was certain that his large SUV would emerge unscathed from the encounter. At first it seemed as though the auto had done it; and with a surprisingly small amount of resistance, too. Unbeknownst to the boys, the bottle had torn a small hole in the tire; and as they drove down the parkway, the air slowly seeped out until it was all gone. They realized the tire was flat about a quarter of a mile north of the Southern State Parkway.
Once Cackburn knew it was flat, he pulled over to the side of the road. There, he and his friends argued about how to handle the situation. Jerry and Frank favored calling AAA, for they felt the job was too much for the four friends to handle. Alex disagreed, reasoning that it was his car; and that if they did not want to help, he could just do it himself.
After about five minutes of work, both Frank and Jerry became restless and insisted that they call AAA. Joe felt that it would be better if they just left the car there and walked to a gas station. The three of them were becoming increasingly frustrated with what they viewed as a no-win situation.
“I wasn’t going to just walk away from my car, I started a job and I was going to finish it,” Cackburn announced defiantly. “They barely let me work on the thing, but they were watching the clock the whole time, so of course it seemed worse than it really was,” Cackburn further explained.
Cackburn finally decided to call AAA after everyone agreed that he was not making any progress. AAA arrived and towed the truck to a gas station, where Cackburn’s tire was replaced for $87.00.