In the good old days, a flat tire wasn’t a big deal. My sister and I changed one on a busy freeway without help and in less than 20 minutes. Pretty simple really. Remove the hubcap, loosen the lug nuts, use the jack to raise the car until the tire is off the ground so you can pull it off, put the new one on and reverse the process. Since the spare tire was a real tire, I drove on it until I had time to fix the flat one.
None of that is true anymore. I discovered it pretty much takes a village (or at least two really strong neighbors) and extra tools to just remove the tire. And the spare isn’t really a tire; it’s some kind of round thing that makes the car drive funny and can’t be used to go more than a few miles or faster than my new dog, Jesse, can run. Also, it’s not possible to get it replaced quickly in Payson on a Saturday morning. Plus, my neighbors and their dogs were waiting for me and my dogs at our favorite trail and I felt badly that I couldn’t let them know why I wasn’t showing up. And, my house was on the route of the triathlon so the car was kinda in the way and the dogs were watching the car and barking at all of the runners who might have been getting too close to me.
It took about an hour of barking, sweating and thanking to get the car into the driveway and accept yet another neighbor’s offer of the use of their car. John and Nancy even took the dogs to their house so I could get ready for work without noise and with a bit of time to spare. When I stopped for gas on the way out of town, I discovered a locking gas cap. Back to their house and then back to the gas station, which gave me the opportunity to sit at the stop light at 87 and 260 multiple times.
The second time at the gas pumps found me waiting in line (Saturday morning is also not a good time to get gas). Not one but two men in pickups cut in front of me and pickups must hold lots of gas because they were there for-ev-er. I wisely used the time to eat all the cookies and chocolate Nancy had provided for my drive.
Traffic was bad. Usually, a Saturday morning drive to Phoenix involves a mostly empty road, but a lot of folks were heading in the same direction as me. And while I understand the concept of a leisurely drive through the mountains, I believe leisure is best enjoyed in the right lane of a divided highway since some folks, through no fault of their own, have time constraints. Although, come to find out, I didn’t. While I was driving in circles in the parking garage (never had to do that before as there have always been plenty of empty spaces) I realized my check in time was 15:45, not 13:45. I normally verify that before leaving but I hadn’t had time (or so I thought) to power up the computer.
Those extra two hours gave me time to lose my reading glasses somewhere between the car and the terminal and my new pen between the check-in room and the airplane. It also gave me time to reflect on how many things can go wrong on the way to the plane. Odds are at least one of my passengers had something resembling my challenges before they stepped through the aircraft door, so when some of them greeted me with, “How are you?” I lied and said, “Fine, thanks for asking.”
It was just a little lie, really. Or, maybe more of an omission. “I’ll be fine, thanks for asking.” Once I got safely to my hotel, I called to make sure the house was still standing and the dogs were okay (or maybe it was the dogs were still standing and the house was okay).
I decided, as far as bad days go, it could have been worse.
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