(no subject)
Nov. 13th, 2004 11:21 pmI'm driving home from a dinner party and my car starts going tap tap tap tap. I think it's probably the road needs repaving. Then my car goes SNAP rattle thunk ominous silence. This I decide means it's time to stop and check nothing important just fell off. Pull over into nice quiet side street (or so I think), park, set hazard flashers, get out. Ominous silence gives way to ominous hissing noise. Inspection reveals the left rear tire is losing air.
The designers of my car stored everything necessary to swap out a flat tire in clever little compartments in the trunk, out of the way till you need them, then readily to hand. Except that it's dark, I don't have a flashlight, and some of these compartments are not where the owner's manual says. The spare tire itself is easily found, as is the jack and its handle. The alleged location of the lug wrench, however, holds only a spring and a golf ball. After a few moments of panic I discover that the lug wrench in fact lives in a symmetric compartment on the opposite side of the trunk, and set to kicking the nuts loose.
About this time it becomes obvious that what I thought was a quiet side street is in fact a major throughfare for the residential district where I am. People are driving past with varying degrees of gracefulness (there are no free parking spaces so I am stuck blocking a lane). Eventually, as I am struggling with the fifth lug nut which is frozen, someone comes out of a house and offers to let me pull into their driveway. Doing this somehow unfreezes the last nut, and after that the only hurdle is figuring out where (on the underside of a car which is mostly made of sheet fiberglass) to put the upper end of the jack. Did I mention it's dark and I have no flashlight?
Limp home on the spare. At home there is whisky.
The designers of my car stored everything necessary to swap out a flat tire in clever little compartments in the trunk, out of the way till you need them, then readily to hand. Except that it's dark, I don't have a flashlight, and some of these compartments are not where the owner's manual says. The spare tire itself is easily found, as is the jack and its handle. The alleged location of the lug wrench, however, holds only a spring and a golf ball. After a few moments of panic I discover that the lug wrench in fact lives in a symmetric compartment on the opposite side of the trunk, and set to kicking the nuts loose.
About this time it becomes obvious that what I thought was a quiet side street is in fact a major throughfare for the residential district where I am. People are driving past with varying degrees of gracefulness (there are no free parking spaces so I am stuck blocking a lane). Eventually, as I am struggling with the fifth lug nut which is frozen, someone comes out of a house and offers to let me pull into their driveway. Doing this somehow unfreezes the last nut, and after that the only hurdle is figuring out where (on the underside of a car which is mostly made of sheet fiberglass) to put the upper end of the jack. Did I mention it's dark and I have no flashlight?
Limp home on the spare. At home there is whisky.
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