ELMER part 1

I purchased new tires the other day. Although they were a bit expensive, this was the first time in my life that I didn’t get the feeling I had just been ripped off while driving off of the lot. A client of mine manages a tire store and he sold the tires to me at the ‘rack price’ (that’s the official tire shop term for ‘really cheap’) and barely charged me for the balancing and stuff. Usually I leave one of those places feeling like a 350lb member of the Hell’s Angels gave me a prostate exam (oh wait, we covered that in the ‘Fo-Tee-Fo entry from Sept 26th). Finally I am benefiting from one of those ‘one hand washing the other’ deal-e-o things; I feel like an elected official on a lobbyist paid for Bahamian vacation.

Buying tires is one of those necessary evils that we all hate but have to do at some time. It’s like having to quickly buy a new refrigerator while your old one is rapidly turning what remaining food you have into foul furry fungi covered Chia pets. At least I was lucky this time. Even though I rode on my badly worn wheels for longer then I should have, I did not have to deal with a roadside flat.

These days with my current relatively short commute, the thought of being on the side of the road changing a tire does not bother me too much. Back when I used to travel for work it was not uncommon for me to load the car with enough luggage and comforts from home to live out of it for six months. Being my usual paranoid self, I constantly worried about my car breaking down in the middle of nowhere with my mountain of possessions exposed for anyone to steal. I certainly had my share of car problems all over the country, but when I think of tire issues I always think of Elmer.

I was on the last leg of a three-day cross-country drive with about four hours to go until I made it to Los Angeles. The sun was setting as I drove deeper into the eastern California desert. About a half hour earlier I had passed the sign outside of Needles that read ‘next services 150 miles’. I was enjoying the quiet beauty of day turning into night in the barren desert when a loud ‘bam’ rocked the car. My rear passenger tire blew out. I immediately pulled off to the side of the road, caught my breath, and started to deal with the inevitable.

As it got darker and darker I unloaded my jam-packed trunk of possessions onto the road to get to the spare tire. I had thought it was smart to pull off the road as far as I could so as to not get hit by a speeding tractor trailer but as I dug out the little mini ‘doughnut’ spare tire I kept feeling like I was one foot too many in the desert. It soon became pitch black. Imagining desert critters big and small watching me, I worked as fast as I could move. Between turning lug nuts I constantly stared into the nothingness right behind me to spot whatever it was that was about to bounce on me.

When the occasional truck did come along, I used the beams of their headlights to hastily scan the desolate terrain until they passed right next to me shaking my car, blowing over my stuff and kicking up a mini windstorm of dust. As their tail lights faded into the night things seemed even darker then before until my eyes readjusted to the light. Sure that some desert creature was about to drag me into the unknown, I changed the tire with the speed of a Nascar pit crew.

I tossed the blown out wheel in the back seat and shoved all my stuff into the trunk as fast as I could. Faced with the decision of going the wrong direction after driving over 2000 miles to a sure thing service station back in Needles or continuing to drive towards L.A. at 40 miles an hour with the chance that the ‘mini spare’ will blow out in the middle of nowhere, I opted for the journey deeper into the desert. Little did I know I would soon meet Elmer.
TO BE CONTINUED….