Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Good Luck and Bad Luck

This should have been an easy errand: Just get in the car and pick-up Jemma from school. I had just completed a barefoot run and didn't have time to shower before setting out. As it happens, I drive right past where the older daughter parks for cross country practice and I happened to notice that one of her rear-tires was low. After I got Jemma, I swung into the lot to take a closer look...sure enough, the tire was completely flat. The coach was briefing the girls on the workout they were about to do. Jemma wondered why I needed to talk to Dahlia or show my face or bare feet at all. I suggested that I couldn't get to the spare unless I could get ahold of the spare tire, locked inside of the car. So, I approached, got the daughter's attention and motioned her to come to me. It took about ten minutes to swap out the flat for the doughnut. It kind of hurt my bare foot to loosen the lug-nuts. Finished, I took the flat with me to see if I could fix it. I put a patch on the tire and decided to let it set-up while I took a shower. After the shower, the air seemed to be holding and so I set about swapping back the repaired tire. One of the lug nuts stuck and I had to sheer it off to complete the job. That is the bad luck part of all this. Thinking that the girl might want to avoid this car out of doubts about the reliability of the repair, I decided to take it and leave the car I came in for her. Good thing I did--the key would not turn! The jacking up and down of the car had put a lot of pressure on the wheel and you have to relieve this to unjam the ignition lock. It took all the strength I have to torque the wheel free--I would have been called to come and help, so this kind of worked out nicely