This past spring I decided to drive up to our summer cottage on the lake. I packed cleaning supplies in anticipation of spending the day cleaning and getting the cottage ready for the summer season that was soon to be upon us.
My summer place is about two hours drive from the city where I live. The cottage used to belong to my grandpa; when he died a number of years ago, he left it to me. I have such fond memories as a child spending weeks at a time every summer at grandpa's cottage; swimming in the lake, hiking in the woods, sitting on grandpa's lap on the old porch swing as he told scary ghost stories by moonlight.
As you might suspect, my summer cottage is pretty far from civilization. But the drive is beautiful through long stretches of forest and woodlands, interspersed by the occasional hay field. I left early on a Wednesday morning (one of the bene's of being self employed) and traffic was very light once I got outside the 'beltway' around the city. I was about a half hour away from the cottage, I was on a narrow two lane blacktop and traffic was nonexistent. I hadn't seen another car for at least fifteen miles as I drove though the thick forest.
That's when the tire blew. Thankfully it was a rear tire or I might have swerved off the road and ended up in the deep ravine on the right side of the road. The blown tire was making a terrible racket as I pulled off onto the narrow berm as quickly as I could.
When I got out of the car and went around to the passenger side and inspected the damage I was shocked to see that the tire was almost completely shredded.
"Why me!" I shouted at the cloudless sky as I threw my hands up in the air; fists clenched.
After pacing back and forth in front of the ruined tire for a few moments to work out my frustrations, I put my hands on my hips and realized I was going to have to change it myself, or sit there along on the side of the road for cripes knew how long waiting for someone to come along.
Fortunately, I've always been a pretty independent woman -- even a tomboy as a young girl -- and I've never been afraid to tackle just about anything. Problem was, I'd never changed a tire in my life. Hell, tires don't go flat on modern cars; well, not very often that's for sure. I pulled open the passenger side door and found the SUV's owners manual in the glove box and I started searching for information on where the jack was squirreled away. Don't you just love owner's manuals that have obviously been written by people with English as they're third or fourth language?
After an interminable about of searching the book, I finally found the information I needed. The jack was located in a compartment in the cargo area of the SUV. I raised the back hatch and looked for the compartment.
I opened the compartment and found the jack which was secured by a mysterious arrangement of clamps and bolts. The manual made no mention of how to extract the car jack; no doubt, presuming it to be intuitively obvious as to how to remove the device. It wasn't at all obvious, and it took me several minutes of tugging and twisting to get the damn thing out.
Next, I referred again to the owner's manual as to the operation and placement of the jack which turned out to be fairly straight forward. I placed the jack in the indicated position and started cranking until the top of the jack was pushing up against the frame of the car just forward of the rear wheel. I kept cranking until the body of the car had lifted several inches but with the wheel still on the ground. It was at that point the owner's manual advised loosening the lug nuts. I removed the jack handle, which doubled was a lug wrench, and used it to pry off the hubcap which was a heavy molded plastic manufactured to look like brushed aluminum. It looked like plastic.
Next, I placed the lug wrench / jack handle, on the first lug nut and gave it a tug. Nothing happened.
"Pretty tight, eh?" I said aloud to myself.
So, I bent over and put all my strength into it and let out a loud groan. Nothing happened; not even the slight little nudge.
"Shit!" I shouted. "Now what?"
I got an inspiration -- I removed the "L" shaped lug wrench and put it back on the lug nut so that the handle was pretty much parallel to the ground. Then I put a foot on the handle and prepared to leap up onto the lug wrench and place all my weight on the damn thing and force the fucker to loosen whether it wanted to, or not. Good plan ... bad idea.
The next thing I knew I was laying on the ground next to the wheel and my head really hurt. I sat up and looked at the wheel and saw that the lug wrench was lying on the ground; and I also noticed that the lug nut I was trying to get off now looked more round than hexagonal. I realized I'd managed to strip the head and that it may never come off thanks to my efforts.
"Fuck!" I screamed to the critters in the woods.
Aware that I was now totally screwed, I turned to my resource of last resort -- my cell phone. I was going to have to call the "motor club" and wait for someone to come out and rescue me. I retrieved my cell from my purse and dialed 411 to get the number for the motor club roadside assistance. But, nothing happened. I checked the phone's little display screen and learned I had no 'bars' --
can you hear me now?!
It occurred to me that I was stranded in the middle of nowhere. I knew the nearest town, no more than a village really, was behind me about fifteen miles. Ahead, I was more than twenty miles from the cottage, though there was a little general store and gas station near the lake. Still, that was farther than the village.
I concluded that I would just chill and hope a car came past soon. After an hour with nary a car going by, I was beginning to question the wisdom of my decision. The morning was almost gone; it was hot, much hotter than normal for so early in spring. I dreaded the thought of walking five hours or more but I saw no other choice.
Perhaps, I thought, there might be a farm house on the way at which I could beg and plead to use their phone.
I grabbed my half empty bottle of water, put on my baseball cap -- with my ponytail threaded through the back of the hat - and I headed off down the road. Humming "We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of ..."
After an hour, I had to stop. My tank top was drenched in sweat and my head was feeling light with a hint of dizzy and I knew I had to rest. I was so wet from sweating that I looked like a contestant in a wet t-shirt contest -- I hadn't worn a bra and my wet top was kind of translucent. Hell, it was completely 'see thru.' I drank the last of my water and was beginning to get concerned given how wiped I was after only walking an hour. With a good four hours to go, I was beginning to wonder if I was going to make it. As I rested in the shade of a tree near the side of the road I heard a wondrous sound -- an approaching car.
Not wanting to let it get by me, I leaped up and ran out into the middle of the road and faced the oncoming vehicle which was coming from the direction of the lake and heading towards the village.
Great, I thought, I can get a ride into town.
I started waving my arms frantically, oblivious to the fact that I was standing directly in the path of the approaching truck (I could see it wasn't a car by then) and if it chose not to stop, I was gonna be dead meat. Thankfully, the driver seemly did not want to risk vehicular manslaughter charges and stopped. I ran around to the driver's window; which was open.
"Oh thank heavens! I'm so happy you came along. My car broke down -- a flat tire -- about a mile or so back that way." I pointed back in the direction of my abandoned SUV. "I was walking to the village but almost passed out from the heat. Could you give me a lift so I can call someone for help from the village? My cell phone is totally useless out here. Please?"
I think by then I was sounding pretty frantic.
"Sure lady, hop in." The driver said; though I noticed his eyes on my wet tank top which was showing off my hard nipples and the dark circles around them as they poked through the thin wet material. A thought flashed through my head questioning the advisability of hitch hiking on such an isolated stretch of road, especially when my wet top made me look half naked!
That's when I realized the driver was a twenty something year old young man with rugged good looks and a day's growth of beard. He was dressed in dingy overalls, but that aside, he was really sort of cute.
"Oh thank you soooo much." I said; and I ran around the front of the guy's panel truck to the passenger side door. As I opened the door I noticed a sign on the door that advertised "Jake the Handyman" service with a local phone number to call.
"My name is Joan, and you just saved my life!" I told him.
"I'm Jake. You said it was just a flat tire?" The guy asked.
"Yes, I tired to change it but I couldn't get the nut thingies off -- I think I stripped one of them."
"Well, its not that far back -- I saw it sitting there by the side o' the road when I drove past. Why don't we just see if I can get the tire changed for you? Save a lotta time that way." He said as he turned the truck around and we headed back the other way.
When we got to my car he pulled up behind my SUV and he got out to inspect the damage.
"Don't look too bad t' me. I think I can get that stripped lug nut off, the rest of 'em won't be no problem at all. Let me get a decent lug wrench outta m' truck."
He sounded a bit 'hick-ish' but I was totally happy to have stumbled on him; or maybe it was the other way around. Jake returned with a couple tools and started to work on what I thought was a completely ruined nut.
He used a file to try and square up the head of the nut a bit and then he put some sort of oil on the nut. His wrench looked like a big plus sign with different size things on the ends to go over the nuts. He applied the wrench to the lug nut and let out a big grunt as he put his weight into it. He heaved on it a couple times and then the wrench finally turned with a high pitched screech as the lug nut let loose.
"There, that wasn't so bad." He said. The rest of the lug nuts came lose one after the other and Jake jacked the car up until the ruined tire was well off the ground.
