Corny title, I know.
Saturday was supposed to be a busy day. We knew that. Seeing that we live outside of the Cities, we try to squeeze as much into one day as physically possible and that takes a bit of effort and planning. We need to account for time and what we can do with reasonable limits and plan for the dog as well.
For the most part, Saturday went fine with a couple of small hitches. Melanie’s breakfast/brunch thingy with her girlfriends ran a bit later than we expected, but was thoroughly enjoyed–so I hear. I didn’t go. It was a girlfriend-thing after all. Because of the impending arrival, each guest was invited to bring something for the baby. Melanie’s girlfriends brought a lot of it. All of the baby stuff essentially filled what room remained in our car. Between the gifts and my hockey bag, there was no room for much else. That was okay because we hadn’t planned on shopping and there was no need to have too much extra room.
After the brunch and visiting some friends, I got to finally do something I’ve wanted to do since I was about eight years old. We went to Chuck E. Cheese. It was not for me but for my nephew’s fifth birthday. I gotta say, that place does appeal to that age group really well. And although there were a couple of games there which looked fun to play, I didn’t want to be the almost forty year old guy who’s hogging a game and making a bunch of kids wait. It was fun to watch regardless.
After the trip to Chuck E. Cheese, it was time to drive up to New Hope for my hockey game. It was a good game and fortune saw to it that we won. A celebratory post-game drink and food was in order and after that, it was time to hit the road for home.
And that’s when things started to get weird.
January 2nd was a pretty cold day, even by our standards. The high that day for the Cities was a whopping one degree above zero where the lows settled in at about -24°F. Earlier that day, Melanie had remarked that we should check the tire pressure along the way seeing that all of our tires seemed a bit low. Of course, we didn’t actually follow through on this and fate waved her magic “gotcha” wand and made us pay for that little bit of foreshadowing. At around 11pm that night, our driver’s side rear tire went flat while we were on I-35w north.
Fortunately the tire didn’t blow out, but the fact it went flat was something we were kicking ourselves over because it seemed to be preventable. We took a few minutes and made sure the hazards were blinking and that we were far enough off the road to do some work. We needed to move many bags and items of baby stuff around just to get to the donut of a spare tire, the jack and tools.
At this point of tire changing, it’s pretty much a one man job. I told Melanie to sit in the car and keep warm…plus keep buckled up just in case. It took a bit to find where the jack needed to sit under the frame of the car, but once I found it, I proceeded to change the tire.
For those of you who have never done this, changing a tire on the interstate can be pretty harrowing. At 11pm, traffic was light, but there were still a number of cars on the road. Most of them are courteous enough to move over to the other lane to give you some room. Of those that didn’t move over…that was uncomfortable. Having cars zip past at 70+ MPH a few feet away was unnerving enough that I didn’t really mind or think about the cold which at that time of night was hovering at around -19°F. It kept me alert, watching the incoming cars and hoping that none of them were being stupid. Twenty minutes later, I had the spare on, loaded up the car again to make our way to the exit and a gas station which lie just ahead.
We gassed up and sidled up to the air machine to top off all of the tires and re-inflate the spare which was extremely low. Problem was that the air machine at the station was recently “fixed”. And by fixed, I mean neutered. The station attendant had said that earlier that day, the air machine didn’t work at all. And now, it barely worked. Pumping up the tires from 20 PSI to just 28 PSI took nearly eight minutes per tire. After topping off the remaining good tires and getting the spare from 14 PSI to just under 30 PSI, we hobbled off to home, driving on the interstate at 55 MPH. We accepted the fact that getting home at 1 AM was a given.
Finally off the interstate and just fifteen miles from home, we came across another car, hazards on and a guy checking under the hood. We pulled over to see what we could do as this wasn’t a heavily traveled road, it was after 1 AM and the temperature was still dropping. Their car had just died without any indication of what was wrong and they were stuck. They had asked for a ride. We unfortunately didn’t have any room with my hockey bag and the baby gifts taking up all of our room. We offered to see if we could get someone to help them out and drove to the nearest open place which was a bar about a mile away.
Melanie went inside to see if something could be done while I tried my best to rearrange some of the space to allow for people to fit into the car. The bar was no help as the young, drunk people who frequented the place actually were going to be driving home in the opposite direction. After switching some stuff around, I was able to get room for one person, two if they sat on the lap of the first. We drove back to the stranded car to see if this would help. We managed to get one woman and a young child into the car and drove them back home. Along the way, we got word there was someone going to get the other two people and their car.
The drive home had the effect of putting things in perspective for us. After the flat tire, we were feeling like we were put out. How cruel the world was to curse us with a flat tire on a cold night, we thought. We realized that we had it pretty good after all when running into a car of four people on a lightly traveled road in the dead of night without being able to run the engine to keep warm and responsible for the welfare of a three year old. Much like the flat tire itself, we stopped not out of charity, but it was what we had to do. There was no question in it, no debate about it.
Saturday night really took it out on me the next day. I was tired to begin with after playing hard at my hockey game, to add on changing a tire and fitting two people in the car as we took them home really chipped away at my rest and recovery time. Yesterday was nearly a total loss as I was not myself. I was listless and it took a toll on Melanie who was being amazing and understanding.
If you believe in karma, and I feel like it has some merits in it, maybe we got that flat because then we would have been in the right time and place to help someone else out. If so, then I’m glad it happened as it did. The only negative effects seem to be a bit tired the next day and sore muscles today–that’s a fair trade-off.
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