Matt and I were just pulling out of my parking spot and heading to dinner when we heard an odd sort of whooshing sound coming from the car and realized we were heading down the road rather un-evenly. We both knew immediately that something was wrong (the intuition, we has it) and turned around and re-parked. And I had a big, yucky, flat tire.
This wasn't even a tire that was gracefully deflating bit by bit. This was a tire that had somehow managed to go completely flat on the bottom in the roughly 5 hours since I had driven it to class with no incident (although obviously there was some kind of incident, because tires don't just die on their own, Chelsey). So yeah, mystified. And kind of concerned. Maybe the neighbors slashed my tires because they secretly hate me, etc. And with no obvious cause-o-deflation, this was getting more worrisome by the second.
So like any responsible couple, we got in Matt's car and went to dinner anyway. Problem + empty stomach = nightmare. And dinner was really good, if you can look past the fact that it was one of those restaurants where they serve you teeny morsels instead of meals for actual people who need sustenance, dammit. Some of us have car repairs to do tonight, bro. Case in point, we stupidly thought the appetizer would be large enough to split, and it most certainly was not. I thought baked avocado meant you would get like...the two halves of the avocado. Or something? Perhaps because it was $7, and seriously? If you're going to sell me a $7 avocado it better be the size of a pumpkin and plastered with gold leaf. Avocados are like, 50 cents at the store. Maybe a dollar. Okay I have no idea because I don't buy that many avocados (sorry Mom) but I do know FOR A FACT that a single damn avocado doesn't cost seven fucking dollars. Oh, and did I mention they only served us half of the avocado? Because they did. The anger, it ate us alive.
Okay, back to the flat. After supplementing our still-hungry bellies with some ice cream, we headed back to handle the tire problem. I had some concern about this, mostly because I knew it would involve talking to strangers on the phone and I hate, hate talking on the phone unless I have nothing else to do (like if I'm driving from say, Tuscaloosa to Cincinnati) and even then I only ever call like, 3 people. And one of them is my mother. And mostly she calls me because she hates me driving alone for a long time (read: anywhere from 3 to 14 hours). Luckily I have a darling boyfriend who loves to talk on the phone and rip strangers apart when they don't comply with his will and..stuff like that (yes, I feel that this makes us a perfect couple. He handles the phone call-confrontations and I sit in my canopy bed and listen and thank goodness it isn't me on the phone). So he was designated caller of the tire fixer company (in some cultures this is also known as AAA).
How did I know there would be a confrontation I would need to avoid? Because (see above) the intuition, I has it. Also, getting companies to do things for you seems to mostly be very hard, even if you already have paid for the service. Also, I don't communicate very well over the phone, so maybe that's why my track record with this stuff is so terrible. We may never really know.
But what we do know is that there was a confrontation, because apparently you can't just call the number they provide and tell them to send someone bro, my car has a flat and I have class tomorrow and we need to handle this right now and- policy number? Excuse me? I have a phone number, it's the one I dialed to get to you. That's it. And a pack of information containing every receipt related even remotely to my car that has been carefully hoarded by my mother since it was bought in 2004. That somehow doesn't contain even a whisper of a policy number. The useless things, I have them in large numbers but the helpful things- not so much.
I should also mention that this was Matt on the phone, not me, because I was frantically searching through said hoard looking for said policy number which: spoiler alert, was not in there. So after much cursing and calling different numbers listed on an entirely un-helpful brochure, we finally (and by we I mean Matt, I prefer to use the royal "we" because it makes me sound like I did something other than just call my mother over and over) reached a gentleman who clearly had a heart, and was willing to take pity on us by not only sending someone to change the tire, but who also gave us the policy number with little to no hesitation so that we could avoid this much red tape next time.
Then the gentleman (I call him that, though he clearly had a blatant disregard for personal hygiene and getting his hair cut) arrived in record time to change my tire. Here are a few things I learned:
1. The spare tire is not in a cubbyhole somewhere vaguely under the back seats in my car; it is in fact, under the car, and quite dirty at that. It can also only be reached by use of an odd looking tool and by twisting a weird circle thing under a cover that's in the trunk (cars aren't really my thing, can you tell?). So I don't know how you get it out if you're on the side of the road and planning on doing this yourself, because I certainly don't have that tool and you probably don't either.
2. The spare tire is not really a spare tire, in that it is not a whole other tire for back up emergencies designed to prevent a trip to the mechanic. It's actually a sad, joke tire that doesn't look like it could hold up a small scooter, much less an SUV. It also has parameters for usage, like not going above 45mph and not driving on it for more than an hour. Even my intrepid tire changer gave it a sort of doubtful kick and made a comment about really not relying on it for too long. So that's brilliant. I think my idea of just always having a fifth tire with you is a much better one than just this useless teensy baby tire.
3. Professional tire changers see no reason to use the jack that's already in a cubby in my car. I can't use it (because I don't know how, not because I deem it unworthy of the honor of holding up my precious car), but I can find it because that's as far as we got during my last learn-to-change-a-tire session. Matt even snorted derisively at me when I asked about it because it's obviously kind of crappy, Chelsey. So yeah, tons of confidence points in that. But anything that claims it can lift my whole car up with just a few tugs of a handle I already sort of view with an innate suspicion.
4. The emergency break is necessary to put on when the tire changer is lifting up your car. Because of where the brakes are and his desire to not have the car land on his head and/or body when the brakes give and it rolls forward and off the jack and stuff. Or something. I wasn't really paying attention because there were a lot of bugs being attracted to the headlights of the tire-changer's car and I was busy trying to make sure a mutant Alabama supersize mosquito wasn't going to eat me. But Matt took care of it because one of us needs to have a regard for human life. Just kidding...
5. The cause for the flat is either a hole the size of my pinkie fingernail that was worn over one of the treads, or my tire just spontaneously went womp womp and decided to call it quits. If I could ask it, I would tell you its answer. So the good news is, no one slashed my tires. Which is also kind of a shame because I was really looking forward to having a story like that in my repertoire. However, that would have meant more phone calls, this time to the police and probably the insurance company, two separate entities that I regard as having high authority in my life and that I am very intimidated by. And probably they also don't accept Matt's explanation of No, I am not Matt so and so, I'm actually calling on behalf of Chelsey so and so, because she's my girlfriend and hates talking on the phone, so please just pretend like I am legally privy to this conversation and get on with it so we can all have a better day. But usually you have to read between the lines to hear that last bit.
Basically, try to avoid getting a flat tire. Definitely avoid getting your tires slashed. And then, make sure you have someone on hand who is good at talking on the phone. Although really, just having a phone takes priority in that one. And I shouldn't write these late at night.
In other news: I am terrible, terrible at not going on tangents in blog posts. Forgive me?
Also: I forgot about Paris posts. So yeah, I'll stick the rest of them up here. Not now though. Now I am going to bed.
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