How to change a tire

I want to offer my thanks to the guy in the black Dodge Ram pickup dually who was pulling a boat on a trailer going north on I45 at Bay Area Blvd Sunday afternoon. The one who had blown a tire, which also blasted the fiberglass trailer fender into a blizzard of pieces, one of which I couldn't avoid.

Said piece of fiberglass fender punctured the sidewall of my left front tire, which politely held air from 1:30 in the afternoon until nearly 8:00 the next morning, at which point it gave up and went totally flat.

Monday morning, the tire was flat flat flat. I had to change the tire. I'd not had to change a tire in many years. My young room mate offered to help, it being nearly 90 degrees. We fiddled with pulling the spare tire out of the trunk. I had to unload the stuff in the trunk. Austin key map? When was the last time I used this thing? How many containers of brake fluid do I really need? A little sorting and organization was done. Out came the donut spare.

Interestingly, it was just thrown into the spare tire well. I'm so surprised it wasn't rattling around in there. I unloaded the jack, the spare tire, and the accouterments. It wasn't so stressful working on the situation on my flat, protected garage floor. I assembled the jack and began to set it under the car's jack point - and I asked OJ to loosen the lug nuts on the flat tire.

I ended up having to do the whole thing myself and show him how to do it. I don't think he'd ever changed a tire before. It took me about ten minutes total to swap out the tire for the spare, and then we were off.

The spare only had 19 pounds of pressure, so I limped over to the Exxon station to air it up. The tire looked like a Cheerio in that wheel well, and I was very uncomfortable driving around on it. 38 miles per hour, tops. For two days. I replaced the tire today at Discount Tire - those boys were terrific.

I was so glad to have had my dad's sharing of his knowledge. I wish I knew more of the things he knows how to do.

Today was all about re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I really love my car a lot. I've found a really cool in-dash navigation/stereo/XM radio thing that with speakers, amps, etc. I don't know if it's too deep to fit into my dash, but it's sure appealing. And expensive.

But appealing.

I'm planning on painting my bedroom over Labor Day weekend. YAY!

I'm gestating on the question of politics, mental law and separateness. It's a challenging subject, and something I'm planning on talking about on the 2nd.

I love my car. It's awesome.

And I love my house. It's going to be amazing here with the rooms painted, the windows installed and the new landscaping.