Flat Tire

I bet you know people who manage to have one simple crises at a time and quickly move on to the planned events of the day. Unfortunately I am not one of those people and when things go wrong in my world, they veer far off course with little warning and plenty of drama.

Yesterday I had a flat tire. Sounds simple enough, it wasn’t even raining. I called my husband, Shawn to come and lend support while I changed the tire. After calling my boss and arranging a later start time I unloaded the back end of the car. I carry a crazy amount of junk because my car is a mobile office and I am working in sales when I am not helping out my dad. So I have all manner of equipment including things for the farm.

After putting most of the stuff in the backseat and the rock salt on the ground, I began tearing apart the decking of the back to pull out the spare. Did I mention that I bought this car used in early spring and this was the first occasion to locate the spare, the jack, and any necessary tools? I have a bag of other tools, but nothing that will fit or loosen lug nuts.

In any case all of that came out smoothly, I even managed to get the Jack handle out of the case. It was painfully obvious nobody had ever used this equipment. I jacked up the car when Shawn, my favorite partner in catastrophe, arrived. I struggled to remove the fancy hubcap and began working on the lug nuts after greeting him. Believe it or not, I couldn’t get them to budge.

Now, I am no light weight, fairy fingered woman who doesn’t know how to apply pressure. The one thing that concerned me was I might have been turning the stupid bolts the wrong way, but Shawn was able to assure me I was doing it correctly. Kneeling on the ground is no longer part of Shawn’s abilities. We are lucky that he can walk about 45 steps, but working on cars is no longer in his best interest. That being said, I am pretty capable and simply moved on to another bolt. After the second failed to budge, I lowered the car jack, using the weight of the vehicle to hold the wheel still so it didn’t turn under pressure leaving the nut tight.

It didn’t take long to realize that this was not going to go smoothly.

I called the motor club. Then I called my boss for an even later start time. Shawn ent into town and got us McDonalds. After an hour and a half of waiting and answering questions about my location, they sent out a wonderful man who had all the right tools to remove stripped lug nuts. Quick as a wink the tire was changed to a spare that can only go 45. Yes, 45. The standard speed around here is 55+. So we headed for home, we weren’t far. After using the bathroom we called and took the car over to Walmart.

An hour later they called to say the tire could not be fixed, my fault because I drove on the flat tire. Of course I drove on it, it went flat while I was driving 55+ and I had to find a safe place to pull over. Never mind all that what will a new tire cost? He had to look it up which meant I was on hold. He finally came back and we agreed since there was only 1 tire that fit that I would take that one.

I called my boss to say I would need the rest of the day. Later the Walmart pit crew called to let me know I also needed to replace the lug nuts. I had told them that three times when I took in the car and watched him painstakingly type it in to the notes, so I simply agreed to pay the extra $10 for 5 new working lug nuts.

By the time we picked up the car, it had 4 working tires, lug nuts that were not stripped and an absolute mess in the back end and back seat where everything was thrown in disarray.

We got the car home and I felt like I needed a nap. Instead, we took some time to watch a comedy. I put the car back in order today.