Flat
It could have been worse. I keep telling myself that, and while it’s true, it has yet to make me feel less annoyed.
Yesterday afternoon, I was heading down to the south side of town to visit some friends. For those of you unfamiliar with Indianapolis and its galloping enthusiasm for suburban sprawl, I shall explain further. “Going to the south side” involves a 22-mile drive, much of it on freeways. And the freeway was exactly where I got into trouble. There’s one particular part of I-70 west where I have a little over a mile to merge left across five lanes of traffic—not counting the entrance ramp. I had made it to the fourth lane over when I heard the unmistakeable noise of a tire blowing out and felt the concommitant loss of handling. That meant I had to get over another four lanes in the opposite direction (no breakdown lane on the left side of the road), with a flat tire, in half a mile, at highway speeds. This is doable in light, Sunday-afternoon traffic, but it’s neither fun nor easy. It could’ve been worse; that could have happened during my Monday morning commute. I looked out at the cars whizzing by—including a state trooper—and contemplated my options.
My next step was to call my friends and let them know I wouldn’t make it. They promised to come out and rescue me. I started unpacking my trunk in order to get to the spare. I don’t have a full-sized spare, so going over 45 miles per hour was right out, and on Indianapolis freeways, that’s almost as dangerous as speeding. I had my major stroke of luck before I’d even finished unpacking the trunk. I looked up from my trunk-unpacking to discover that a couple of IPD officers had pulled up right behind me. They promptly got a couple of flares set up and changed my tire for me. They weren’t even on duty yet, technically; they’d been heading to work downtown. I thanked them profusely, and managed to get myself off the freeway at the next exit. That was not a fun mile, but again, it could have been worse.
As I was heading back home, I found myself in a conundrum. Generally speaking, I prefer to spend my money at local businesses. Specifically, there’s a particular auto shop where I prefer to get my car worked on. I’ve been going there for years, and the guys there are great. Unfortunately, they’re not open on Sundays, and I didn’t want to lose half a day of work on Monday getting a new tire. (Given the circumstances, I didn’t think the old tire was going to be salvageable.) As it happens, there’s a super Evil Empire Wal-Mart five minutes from my house, and their auto shop is open on Sundays. They got the job done in under half an hour and for a reasonable price. Again, it could have been worse.
At this point, it was a little after 2:00, and I was already done for the day. I was in my pajamas by 4:00 PM, and I managed to not have any other mechanical difficulties the rest of the day. All together now—it could have been worse.
But you know, it could’ve been better, too.
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