My Good Deed for the Day

So the doorbell rang at about 3PM. One of my neighbors asked if I could come change a flat tire. Now my neighbor "Ms. B" is a single Mom who recently separated from her husband. She's pretty nice and is conveniently a dog groomer. Yep, Maggie spends time over her house every two months or so. So being the manly, man I am, I lowered my voice a few octaves and said, "Sure Ms. B no problem I'll be right over." Change a tire? No problem. I've done it lots of times. I'm pretty good at it.

So I went over and found the spare, and the tire jack no problem. The tire was the passenger side front one. Yep it was flat. Flat like a pancake. The car was basically resting on the tire rim. So I walked back to the house, grabbed my mini compressor (Yes. I have a mini compressor that can inflate up to 175LBS/IN) and went back to try and blow up the tire. Well it looked like it was working to a point, but then it just would not inflate anymore. Now Ms. B's driveway that the car was on is on a 30 degree grade. Now I know what you're thinking, but "No" folks sorry. I didn't pull a Homer Simpson and jack the car up on a 30 degree driveway and then watch it roll down the hill into someone else's house. D'OH!!!!!!



I do stupid things sometimes, but I have moments of "common sense" every now and then. I inflated the tire enough to drive it a small distance, so I pulled it out of the driveway and onto the nice flat, level street.

Ms. B has a Volvo station wagon. Volvo makes really weird jacks. I've never seen anything like it. Instead of a diamond shaped jack this one was a "V." And the other thing is that the Volvo only has one jack point per side of the car. See most cars have 4 points where you can jack it up. This thing had 2. One on each side. OK, I thought it was strange jacking up an entire side of a car to change one tire, but I guess that's how Volvo's are. So I loosened the lug nuts on the tire and jacked up the car. No problem. I took off the tire then went to put on the little donut spare on. BAMMMMMMM!!!! The freakin jack failed, it fell to the left and the car came down. Fortunately I had the spare partially on so I didn't smash up Ms. B's car, and fortunately I was able to get my hands clear when it slid to the left.

Unfortunately the car pinned the jack to a point where I needed to lift it up in order to pull the jack out. CRAP!!!!!! S0 being the ingenious person I am I went back to the house and got my Toyota Matrix jack out of my car. I jacked up Ms. B's Volvo and pulled the Volvo jack out. I lowered the car and figured I could swap out my jack for hers and try to put the donut on. WRONG!!!! My jack was stuck to Ms. B's underside jack point. So I went back to my house and picked up my hammer. I knocked my jack off of Ms. B's jack point and then I slid the Volvo jack back under the car. I jacked up the car again 1/2 way and took a look to see if I could figure out why the jack had failed in the first place.

Turns out that Volvo designs really crappy automobile jacks. Whoever their supplier is should be shot. Any lateral movement sends the jack off balance and because you lift an entire side of the car up it makes matters worse. So I went back to my house and picked up a couple of 2x4's to put behind the car tires so it didn't move. You know as I was going through all these motions I was thinking, "HOW IN THE HECK COULD YOU CHANGE THIS CAR'S TIRE ON THE HIGHWAY????!!!!!!!!"

So I was able to get the donut on, put the lug nuts back on and bring the car down. So I was pretty happy until I looked at the tire. It was FLAT!!!!!! I could have just cried right there. Right in the street, 50 feet from my house, with all the world watching. So I used my little mini compressor, which thank GOD I have that, to inflate the tire up to what it should be. That worked!!!!!!!!! I rang the doorbell and told Ms. B it was fixed and that she should get a new tire ASAP. I walked into the house at 5:05pm, kissed Sharkey, took a shower and then laid down for a nap...... SIGH.....