The events of today have been pretty crazy to put it mildly. It started off as a really good day. I set off from the hotel, got breakfast and fuel for me and headed home. The truck was running great and while Ender wasn't sleeping like I had hoped, he was in a decent mood, as usual. We were about 3 or so miles south of Wilkes-Barre when I heard this pop. Initially I thought that maybe something in the bed had settled or that maybe I had hit something or something had hit me without realizing it. The car behind me slowed down and put on their hazards, so I thought the best course of action would be to pull over to check on the truck. I walked around the back, checked all of my cargo, nothing looked out of place. So I thought it best to check the tires because as I neared the side of the road, it started driving funny. The passenger side looked fine and upon rounding the back quarter, I found the culprit – my back tire had blown out. I started FREAKING OUT... internally of course, but still...
I called ScottE right away. I do know how to change a tire but I was sure that we didn't have a jack or a lug wrench in the truck. I had no idea what I was going to do because I knew that he was at least a couple of hours away, plus he still had a site to complete. He decided to call our buddy Greg who is a tow truck driver. A few minutes later he called me back and said that Greg was actually on his way south and that he was just north of Wilkes-Barre which made this difficult situation a bit easier to handle.
I got instruction on how to lower the spare so that I had something to do while I waited to be rescued. Plus I knew that Greg was doing us a monstrous favor and I didn't want to take more of his time than was absolutely necessary. I got the spare lowered and tried to get the hook off so that it would be ready upon Greg's arrival. Not ever having removed a spare from a pick-up truck, I had no idea how this device worked!
So I went back into the truck and called ScottE, again. He explained it to me and suggested that I extend the wire all the way out so that I could pull the spare completely out from under the truck and then remove the hook. After a lot of finagling, I was able to get the spare out and ready.
I think that had I just sat in the truck it would have seemed like an eternity for Greg to get there. Fortunately, I had something to do. After I finally got it done, in no time at all, my hero arrived! I was sitting on a two-lane stretch of the turnpike and traffic wasn't all that heavy but rather disrespectful – most of them refused to get into the left lane, even when there was plenty of time and space to do so. Greg was flabbergasted.
In what seemed like 5 minutes, the tire was off and replaced, something I totally would have been able to do had I had the proper equipment... but after we got the spare on and synched down, we realized we had another problem – there wasn't enough air in the tire! Normally Greg would have just used the chuck on his tow truck, but apparently it is not currently in working order. Fortunately there was enough air in the spare for me to limp the truck the 2 miles up the turnpike to the nearest exit and the 0.5 mile or so down the ramp to the nearest gas station. However once we got there, we found out that their compressor wasn't working because of the cold. Greg bought a little air pump that plugs into the cigarette lighter. It took a little while but we were able to get air in the tire so that I could make it home.
And after stopping at Wal-Mart, I did just that.
What did you do today?
