Op GE, Part III

When I last left off, my tire had exploded midway on the trip from New Orleans to Austin. My friend Nick and I were stuck on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Beaumont and Houston.

A flat tire is no big deal, particularly not to a crafty bloke like myself. You see, for a mere fee of $30 a year (or something like that), I can mess up my car as much as I want and then call some knowledgable person to come out and fix it for free. This is good for two reasons. First, my car is old and crappy. Second, I have no idea how to fix a car even if it's not old and crappy. Thinking quickly, I called the triple A hotline and told them about the drama; in response, they said someone would be out to help us in 30 minutes. Thirty minutes is a little while, and two virile young men like us could've fixed it quicker than that. However, after a night of hard drinking down in the bayou, I was more than content to let one of the locals nasty himself up on my ancient machinery (if you get my drift).

While we waited, we sat in the back of my truck and watched the cars zoom by disturbingly close to the vehicle. We sat there for a while, convincing ourselves we were safe on the side of the highway and trying not to empty our bladders at the sight of the oncoming traffic, when Triple A called me back.

"We're sorry, Mr. Powell, but the tower won't there for another hour and a half."
"What? Would it expedite things if I told you I know Big Al?" I said.
"Only if you could get us a pair of underwear," they said.

There was no point in arguing. We could either sit there for another 90 minutes, or we could take this bull by the horns and get back on the road.

I hate changing tires. It is a filthy, boring, stupid procedure. As such, I delayed the start as long as possible. First, I moved down the road to the exit, where the chances of death were 10% less. Then I took all of the tools out of my truck, saying we'd be prepared in case the tower got there early. After a few minutes, I said we could take off the lugnuts, just to make the guy's job really easily. A little bit later, I found myself under my car, trying to lower the spare time. "Screw it, let's just do this thing," I declared. I let Nick handle the harder parts, while I was in charge of accidentally rolling the busted tire down a hill onto the access road and then cursing mightily when I had to carry it back up.

We were five minutes from the conclusion when the stupid tower got there. He was an hour ahead of schedule.

"You're not supposed to be here," I said, with perhaps a tad more lunacy than was necessary.
"Isn't that a good thing?" he asked.
"No! Look at my hands! Screwing around with that spare tire has destroyed my cuticles!" I really have no idea what I was saying, I was just trying to make the tow guy cry for making me do all the work myself.

Before he pulled away, I had one question for him. "Hey, do you know where we could get a tire around here?"
"Jeez, on a Sunday? Hmmm... There's a town maybe 10 miles down the road called Winny, they MAY have a tire place there but I wouldn't count on it."

Maybe two minutes after he left, a highway patrolman stops behind us.

"Looks like you boys got the situation well in hand here," he told me.
"You better believe it," I said, although my appearance suggested I'd just gone 15 rounds with some sort of fire-spewing tire beast.
"You know it's a good thing you boys moved down to the exit. We had a couple of folks die a few weeks back when they tried to change their tire back there."
It took some will power there to keep from launching 1000 simultaneous f-bombs. With all the restraint I could muster, I think I said something like, "Yikes."

Anyway, I asked him about a place to get a tire in these parts and he also said that Winny may be worth a shot. As he said that, Nick was just finishing up with the spare. "Allrighty, let's kick it to Winny," I said. "With a name like that, they've got to have something." Uhhh, right.

Posted by Cody at June 2, 2005 6:27 PM