laramie

Last Friday morning I found the right front tire totally flat as I was needing to leave for work, so I hobbled the car to the fifty-cent air at a gas station on Lake Street. I could hear air hissing out even as it was going in, but it plumped out to nearly normal dimensions.

I was determined to get to work, though, and drove as far as the free air on Lyndale (at the SA near The Wedge Coop) where I added more air to the already flattened tire. The air hose there had a leak of its own, badly patched with duct tape. Not much air got through. I wasn’t able to fill the tire fully, but managed to drive the rest of the way to work. Silly me. I should have decided then and there to ditch work and take the car someplace where I could get the tire fixed.

As it was, by the time I got to work it was flat again. I stayed at work for a few hours, but realized I’d have to get to a service station soon, and left early. I had to drive on the flat tire, bumping and limping and hobbling up Lyndale, back to the SA where I hoped to get enough air to make it to Paul Williams’ Tire place. By then the tire was mangled off its rim, and there was a hole in its side that I could stick my finger through. I was all set to call to have the car towed to help, and asked to borrow a phone at the counter in the SA. The manager pointed out to me that there was a service station across the street.

I limped the car across and asked for help. I arrived fifteen minutes before noon, and the nice lady at the counter told me I was lucky I did, because after noon it would have been impossible to order a new tire and have it delivered that day. It took another three and a half hours to get one. Traffic was horrible for the delivery people, in part due to having Hennepin Avenue blocked off for the Uptown Art Fair. During that time I took the bus to Uptown (where I hoped to pick up some business cards I was having printed at the Kinkos there, but my order wasn’t ready so much earlier than I’d requested.) While I was there I looked at some of the displays of the art fair. (I saw only a few things that impressed me.)

Then I bused across town to the USBank near the Hi-Lake Rainbow, so that I could deposit my pay check (only my second from the new temp assignment) and pay for the new tire, and the business cards I needed for the Powderhorn Art Fair the next day. While busing back again to Lyndale an ex-biker with a winged skull tattoo on his arm flirted with me pleasantly. He was due to turn forty and I had to swear to god that I was already older than that.

The upshot of this story is that I did get the new tire, but now I think there’s a leak in the coolant system because the car’s been overheating and I’ve had to add coolant to it a few times in the last week.