All's well

After a week visiting our families in Nashville and Knoxville, I was ready to come home. Not that I didn't enjoy myself. I had a nice time, in fact, and the nicest part of all was that after several years when the holidays filled me with dread and apprehension, this time Christmas was merely pleasant.

But the drive from Knoxville to Madison is a bitch. It takes about twelve hours under the best of circumstances, and that's a lot for one day, even for two drivers. (I once did the drive by myself; I'm not sure how.) Nevertheless, by the time we miraculously passed through Chicago without hitting any traffic, I was starting to relax. It was about 8:00 p.m.

Rain was falling when we got on the Northwest Tollway toward Rockford, then stopped briefly at the Des Plaines oasis. (You initiates: in Illinois, an oasis is a highway rest stop where you can buy stuff.) As we pulled in, I heard a strange sound coming from some part of the car. I decided it wasn't serious. But when we pulled back onto the tollway, the sound became more pronounced: whump whump whump whump. I pulled off at the next exit and drove into a gas station, where I looked at the left rear tire. A piece of thick metal wire was sticking out, and now I heard this sound: ssssssssssssssssssssssss.

It was a flat. Actually, the tire wasn't flat when we pulled in, but after a few minutes it certainly was. Fortunately (I never thought I'd say that), last summer I ran over a screw that deflated a tire while my truck sat in the driveway, so I knew exactly what to do. The mechanisms for changing a tire on my truck are actually quite ingenious: the jack that fits under an axle, the spare tire that descends on a cord from under the bed. Not that I was in any mood to appreciate these things.

But as I worked under the brightly lit shelter, I thanked the universe over and over for letting it be there that I was changing the tire, not the dark, wet (did I mention intensely windy?) shoulder of the tollway.

Do you know how to change a flat on your car?