Spare Tires

San Juan, PR.  5:30pm, Saturday afternoon.  The three of us drive along, traversing moderate traffic by keeping to the far left lane to avoid missing our turn, content that after a great day of sightseeing, we would be home by 7:00pm or earlier.

Ca-thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka…

Rachel: “What’s that?!”
Danielle and I: “Flat tire!”
“Okay, get over to the right.”
“I can’t pull over here!”
 “Just go right.  Get your flashers on.”
“You’re good—merge one.”
“Where do I go?  There’s no shoulder.”
“Just…here, I guess…pull over as far as you can against the guard rail.” 

We pulled over in the on/off lane on the freeway, right near the mall in San Juan.  I got out to assess the damage—we’d been riding the rim of my right front tire. 



In the trunk, we found a tiny spare tire and a tire iron, but no jack.  Even had one of us been confident changing a spare tire, we couldn’t do anything without a jack.

Danielle googled roadside assistance in San Juan on her phone, and I called ask asked them to bring me a jack.  Then we waited, perched on the guard rail behind my car.



Not five minutes later, a car pulled up, and two guys got out and asked if we needed help.

Yes.

The cute one proceeded to pull a jack and several other tools from his car and began changing my tire.  The…not cute…one stood shining a  headlamp at oncoming cars (adding his own version of hazard lights??).

The cute one soon found, however, that my spare tire was…flat.  “I’ll take it,” he said in Spanish, “and fill it.”  He left his friend with us and sped off, returning maybe 10 minutes later with a spare full of air.

We thanked him profusely, gave him $20 for his time (he was a lot cheaper than roadside assistance would have been), and were on our way, driving 40-50mph on the 65mph expressway.

We laughed at our adventure, thanked the kindness of strangers, and were in pretty good spirits…for about 20 minutes, until we heard a BOOM followed by that all too familiar ca-thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka as the spare exploded.

Okay, with a spare that small...it's no wonder it exploded.


We pulled over and inched ahead until we got to an area with a shoulder—in the grass beneath the well-lit “Welcome to Caguas” sign. 





We called Eddie (who has now saved all of us too many times to count this year) and he began “working on” our problem.  We were still 45 minutes from home, with no spare, and most tire places were closed by 7:00pm on a Saturday.

Soon, another stranger stopped to offer his assistance.  This one drove a tow truck.

Mr. Tow Truck knew a used tire place in Caguas that was open, and offered to tow us there for $40.  However, we decided it would be cheaper to just send Eddie to said tire place and wait right where we were. 

Just as Mr. Tow Truck was about to leave, a police officer pulled up.  He told us we weren’t safe where we were (he should have seen the place we were pulled over in San Juan), and told us we had  to get off of the side of the road.

We figured we were just back to plan A, and would let the tow truck driver tow us to the tire place.  But when we called Eddie, he said he already had a tire for us and was on his way.

So Mr. Tow Truck towed us to the mall in Caguas (for only $30) and we waited there for Eddie, our savior, to show up.

Left my purse in the car...so I couldn't get a picture
of it on the tow truck...but i took one right after.
Good little blogger that I am.


We arrived back in Guayama at 10pm—only 3 hours later than anticipated—but thanks to the kindness of strangers, a willingness to go with the flow, and our ability to laugh at our misfortunes, I’d still say the day—and night—was a success.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive thing was that as soon as the plane got to al
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and decided that if the team qualified for Glob
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming to terms with the fact that as a US teacher, I wil
Read more