Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Wednesday, 9 October 2002

# 9:05 PM

automotive blues

Last night one of the neighbors knocked on my door. "Hey, did you know your car has a flat tire?" "Uhh... no..."

This morning I went downstairs and sure enough, flat tire. So I got to have the fun of taking the wheel off and mounting the spare. It turns out that the hardest piece of this is getting the lug nuts off. Since the flat was on one of the front wheels, the only way to prevent the wheel from turning when I tried to wrench the nuts would have been to put a brick on the brake pedal — and start the engine, so that the brake assist would kick in. This struck me as a bad idea. Instead I wedged a crowbar between the wheel and the ground, which worked well enough.

Of course, once I got the spare on, it proved to have gone soft over two years of sitting in the back unused. It worked well enough to drive to the tire dealers, though, and even as I type this a new tire is being installed.

There was a big honkin' gash in the sidewall; I must have scraped against something sharp. (It wasn't clean enough to have been done with a knife.)

overheard

"So you hit a tree and the light changed?"

"Yeah. It was fantastic!"