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December 5, 2005

My Totally Rocking Crazy Party Of A Saturday Night

It was just like going to a really awesome party, only with more sogginess and barely audible cursing

Let me begin by saying that it wasn't as though I had gigantic plans for Saturday night. My Big Night this weekend was Friday. Friday was appropriately exciting, complete with an out-of-town guest, engaging pro sports (Sonics versus Cavaliers, starring BronBron; big win for the Sonics, AND there was a full-on brawl with punches, kicks, beer dousings and ejections in our row -- you really can't ask for much more than that), and even a late-night trip to the local greasy spoon. So, in all fairness, by the time Saturday night rolled around, I was definitely ahead of my fun quota for the weekend.

Of course, that wasn't so much on my mind Saturday night.

My gigantic plan for thie night involved picking up some DVDs and heading up the street to friend's house to watch said DVDs. There might have even been Taco Bell involved if I was feeling especially generous toward myself. So I walk out to my car, fire it up, pull a little ubie on my street, and realize that something is very very wrong with the car. Flat tire. So I pull over, get out, and yup, I've got a flat.

Flat tire? Ain't no thang. Sure, I hadn't really owned a car since 1999, but back when I was a car owner I had fixed my fair share of flats (and by fixed I mean "replaced the flat tire with a spare"). I had even fixed a flat on someone else's car when I worked at a supermarket when I was 15. This is all to say that I felt pretty confident that I would be able to deal with the tire and be on my way shortly.

Not. So. Much.

It turns out that I had probably parked about four inches too close to the curb. This mostly meant that operating the jack was about four-to-five times harder than it needed to be. Fine. My mistake. It also didn't help that it was completely dark and wet in that tiny space between the curb and the newly deflated tire. So I fought with the jack for a while, cursing and bemoaning my poor luck. Grumble grumble.

Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, I learned some important lessons about operating a jack on a slight incline. Mostly, that lesson was "Don't operate a jack on a slight incline." I learned this lesson when the car slipped off the jack. Or, rather, I learned this lesson when the car slipped off the jack the second time; the first time I hoped was just an anomaly that had something to do with not placing the jack in the proper spot on the frame of the car. No such luck. It just wasn't going to work on the hill.

At this point, I seriously considered bailing for the evening. It was cold, it was dark, I'd been fighting with the jack for way too long -- why not just pack up and deal with it in the morning. But what would that have gotten me? It just would have pissed me off in the morning.

Aight then, chin up, time to deal. I was going to have to move the car down the hill. This wouldn't do wonders for the rim, but I was only planning to move it a little bit down the hill to a level spot. Hopefully it wouldn't be too damaging.

In the course of jacking up the car (twice) I had decided to shed my coat. Fairnuff. I was getting warm, so I tossed my jacket in the trunk of the car. So as I'm packing up the jack and other assorted repair gear, I absentmindedly closed the trunk of the car. I walked around to the driver's side and reached into my pocket. Hmmm, that's strange. I usually keep my keys in my right pocket. Checked the other pocket. Empty. Hmmm. I must have put the keys in my jacket pocket. Uh oh. My keys were in my jacket, which was now in the trunk. Sure, I had a spare set, but the spare set was in the house, and the house key was -- you guessed it -- on the same key ring as the car keys.

This. Was. Bad.

There are moments in a day that make one feel genuinely blessed. Moments when you realize that you got really really lucky, and that the next time you get all cheesed off about getting stuck in traffic or the movie selling out, you should remember that for every time your quarterback throws the ball into Roy Williams' chest, Matt Ware returns a blocked field goal for a touchdown. If that door was locked, I was SOL. I would need to get someone to break into the car to get to the keys to get back into the house (there was no contacting the landlord at 10 pm on a Saturday night), and that would take this whole fiasco into heretofore unexplored realms of suckiness.

The door was open. Exhale.

From there on out, it was pretty smooth sailing. Once I got the car to a nice level spot, I had the spare installed in under ten minutes. Crisis mostly averted.

In retrospect, it wasn't my smoothest moment, but I'll still count it as a win because (a) I didn't lose my hand when the car fell off the jack (either time) and (b) I didn't lock myself out of both my house and my car.

And, of course, I still made it to Taco Bell.

Posted by thatkid at December 5, 2005 8:59 AM under C@L , ThatKid

Comments

Posted by: Brad Glory at December 6, 2005 3:16 PM

Posted by: ThatKid at December 7, 2005 11:24 AM

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