It’s been an unusually cold winter here in North Carolina. We’ve actually had almost a week of snow, and the temperatures remained around freezing until just recently.
As a result, we’ve got a lot of potholes in the roads. Some of them are real axle-busters—one just up the road from us had cones and warning lights around it until the city could get it filled in.
Monday night, driving The Artist home from his evening class, I encountered one of these vicious road hazards. It was dark, it was raining, and I didn’t see the hole in time to avoid it. My little Nanovan banged through it, and immediately my tire pressure warning light came on.
“Uh oh,” I remarked, and babied her into the nearest parking lot. I sought out a streetlight with plenty of open parking spaces around it, and we got out to inspect the damage.
“Yep, definitely flat,” observed The Artist.
I was reflecting on an interesting fact: although I’ve had two or three flat tires before this, I’ve never actually changed one myself. A helpful male always swoops in and takes care of it for me. This works out well for everyone, because he gets to feel good about himself for helping, and I don’t have to change the tire.
In this case, though, the helpful male available had never changed a tire, either. But I can read a manual with the best of them, so I got out the trusty owner’s manual (mainly I wanted to make sure I was bracing the jack in the right place) and together we got the spare on.
So yesterday instead of helping out at the homeless shelter, I was sitting in the lounge of NTB waiting for them to put a new tire on. I called the shelter to let them know I wasn’t coming in, feeling like a total slacker because I won’t be coming in for the next couple of weeks either (starting a temp job next week).
I figure that temp job should just about cover the cost of the tire. I feel like a financial Sisyphus.
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