Se Pinchó la Goma (Flat Tire)
The Day of the flat tire. I don’t know how many of you have had flat tires, but today I have been initiated. This is no small thing. I am sure that aside from excuses for arriving at meetings-work-dentists appointments late it is a rare occurrence. Let me tell you about how it works down here. Half the cars drive around with those ridiculous little donut wheels (small spare tire). It’s almost an epidemic. The other day I say a BMW (a nice one too) driving around with that silly little wheel. If he had been in a car locker room the towel whipping would have been fierce.
It’s all fun and games, however, until it happens to you which if you live in Puerto Rico, it will. Maybe it has something to do with the heat (perhaps the rubber is half melted anyway allowing anything from a toothpick to a hard jolly rancher to penetrate your side wall), or the fact that the streets seem to have an extraordinary quantity of pot holes and debris. I don’t know. But today I came out to the parking lot to find out that I had a flat. Aw man. I breathed a sigh of relief, however, because thank God that it didn’t happen in rush hour traffic.
I whipped out the tiny silly diminutive God-awfully goofy little spare tire and cranked up those silly little toy jacks that take a million turns to go up half an inch, put the silly spare on and drove gingerly (avoiding pot holes and debris) to Santurce, a working class neighborhood (some would call it a tough neighborhood) and found a guy who repaired tires… for, get this… $5. Yes, you heard right. $5. Tire repair around here is such a booming business that they charge $5 a tire and work around the clock. Hell, maybe I should get out of the computer racket and cash in on the booming flat business. So the guys found the hole repaired the tire and slapped it back on in about 5 minutes..
…which is good, great wonderful, brilliant, but remember that $5 I was talking about? I didn’t have it. I had $4.50. Now I couldn’t exactly try to scam this guy out of fifty cents on an already impossibly low fee. Wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t accept credit or ATM. To further compound matters, I was in an area where there were no ATMs. Oh, did I mention it was now 5 o’clock. Aw geez, now I have to navigate down streets that when they were designed were intended to be two way streets. Today, however, Puerto Rican’s have taken parking to new levels as cars are stacked on either side in impossible configurations making this already small two way street an even smaller two way street. So it became the Samurai on the bridge all over again. You gonna back up to the nearest cross street or am I? I think not knave. I have to find an ATM. You will suffer should you wish to challenge me. It worked, he backed off and up he went to the nearest cross street. I gave a little wave of thanks and made my way into the heart of a six pack a day smoker, potato chip snarffing, egg guzzling, red meat devouring, whole milk drinking, 500 hundred pound overweight 50 year old. CLOGGED is the word that kept rearing it’s ugly head as I banged on my steering wheel and cursed the accursed traffic and the pot hole ridden tiny streets. After about an hour, I spied it, an oasis of money. A-ha, doh!, I’m on the wrong side of the street. Quick stop in a gas station-run across the street on a pedestrian cross walk that only half remained-narrowly missed by cars honking at this brazen fool who stepped out of his car for even a millisecond-lunging for the security of electronic cash, information age technology that would save my ass, give me my cash and allow me to get on with my life.
So the deed it done, now I have to get back to the tire shop. To relive the feeling, reread the above paragraph. Now I arrive back to the shop and it’s closed. Ah, there he is. I breathe a sigh of relief, and notice the humble tire change guy hanging out at the bar next door. Here’s your money, I say, and thanks for your patience. Whew. The day is done, the tire is repaired, I can go home complete, satisfied, whole again.
I’ll worry about putting that jigsaw puzzle called the jack, lug wrench, wing nut, spare tire assembly sometime next month. For now it’ll just kick around in the trunk. Hey, maybe I’ll need it again really soon.