A week ago I was hocking my wares in metro Detroit. While my Ohio friends can say what they’d like about Michigan, it’s a great state with all kinds of natural wonders. One of those wonders is how exactly can the roads always be in relentlessly shitty shape. I’m piloting a lunar rover over the cratered landscape of the moon.
While making my way from one seen-better-days neighborhood to the next, avoiding gunfire and abandoned cars, I was driving towards a freeway on-ramp trying to make a getaway to a happier environment. Accelerating to a gingerly thirty miles per hour, watching for road hazards, I headed into the shady abyss of a dark underpass, driving on an on ramp that looped under, then onto the highway.
My vision momentarily blinded and disrupted by the lighting changes, I hit a pot hole so hard generations of my family must have felt the impact. Even though I was driving slowly, I hit it so hard and so square I could have chipped a tooth.
Just like the kid in “A Christmas Story”, I said it. I yelled it. The queen mother of dirty words.
Quickly approaching the last couple feet of ramp fork, I had milliseconds to recover from the bone jarring impact and make a critical decision whether to continue on the on the freeway ramp or abort to the relative safety of a Detroit city side street.
In that split second, I mis-chose Interstate. All was good as I climbed the ramp, for at least three seconds before my dash light up like a slot machine and I knew I was fudged. I guided my limp vehicle to the filthy snow and debris filled berm and contemplated my next move. Since I had recently chosen very wrongly on my last critical decision, I paused to take in the variables.
I called triple-A and they were so kind as to tell me they could have someone there in about an hour or so, and I should make myself comfortable with trucks whipping by at 75+ miles per hour, with a foot to spare, for the next hour or so. Facing the dilemma of being a sitting duck on the side of the road waiting for the next texter to ass end me at 80 mph, or walking off the highway into the neighborhood to wait for safety, I realized I was likely safer on the interstate so I decided to change the tire myself.
But of course, certainly, I had a trunk load of work stuff. In addition to ferrying top secret gifts and a friend’s ashes to my brother, the back seat was piled high with miscellaneous bullshit, so I stuffed what I could out of the trunk into the back and front seat while traffic whipped by. The fortunate part (if there was one) was that the exploded tire was the front right, so I was able to crouch down and loosen the lug nuts while sandwiched between the car and guard rail, waiting where I wouldn’t see Death make his approach.
I didn’t use a stopwatch. But I was pleased with my time and lack of blood loss changing out the tire to the spare. I must have picked up some tricks and tips from a Nascar event I attended some years ago. More likely, it was watching Ron change tires dozens of times over the years. Don’t misunderstand, Ron avoids road hazards like the plaque, but he rotated his own tires every 5000 miles, in our backyard. There are right ways and wrong ways to change tires and I learned from the best. Casting nostalgia away, I loaded the car back up and merged into the traffic flow with not the kind of doughnut I prefer while driving.
As his timing is often perfect, my brother who lives in the Detroit area rang me to see how my day was going. I recounted my challenges so far and he empathized with something along the brotherly love line of “sucks to be you” and at that moment, I agreed with him. He directed me to a city that had a Costco and I headed there in a quest for new rubber.
Pulling into the packed Costco lot, the panic purchase of the day wasn’t toilet paper or eggs, it seemed to be tires. I stood in line and thought “this isn’t good”. I happened behind a well-dressed man who seemed intent on not only getting tires, but “negotiating” with Costco. This seemed insane to me, but after overhearing what I overheard (words like: later, tomorrow, maybe), I turned on my heel and decided to look elsewhere.
I was happy to find a small, dank, and dirty tire shop a few miles away where I recounted my situation in the best broken English I could muster. Using my hands like shadow puppets and raking my fingernail across my neck let him know this was an urgent situation. He offered to put a used tire on.
Since I don’t use used tires, and my car wasn’t too far off from needing a full set of tires, I asked about getting all four – new. I experienced a little angst now because when I’m going to drop a grand on something, I like to do a little research, read reviews and comparison shop. This situation would allow for none of that. I put my elbows on the tire store counter as I prepared for the worst.
The name brand tires quoted out near the thousand I was expecting and I asked for alternatives. To my surprise he said he had a good “Chinese” tire that would save me about a hundred dollars each and he’d have me back out on the road in an hour. I salvaged the day, hit the meetings I need to and moved the others, just like any other time.
Later that night I noticed I received a bag of Doritos in my “valued customer” goody-bag at the hotel, and I found “Pulp Fiction” on TV.
– It was a good day.