I never planned a full day of halt anywhere in my cross country trip. But checking my mail yesterday revealed that I needed to work a bit on my masters project report, nothing very serious but still it could relieve me of some headache.
I did some work in the morning and also processed and uploaded my ride pictures from the last 3 days. It was really worth doing.
The interesting part came later in the day. We three went 20 mi to Clearwater beach to enjoy the sunset. The sun was half over the horizon when I could barely manage to click a few frames till it was fully gone. And then Kulkul came running from where they were supposed to park the car. “Joy come soon, air is leaking from a front tire.” Bodhayan could barely manage to park the car to one side of the road when the tire dislodged from the rim. Luckily it was the right side tire so at least we didn’t have to work in the middle of the road.
Now we faced some hard facts: the car had one spare tire of proper size and an extra spare of a smaller size. The proper sized one didnt have air. There were no tools, and the jack was without its lever. And no membership with AAA.
I walked the spare tire to the nearest gas station in the hope of inflating it and then borrow someone’s spanner and jack to replace it. Murphy’s laws are really everywhere. The air pump didnt seem to work but later we found the tire beads weren’t seated properly, with air escaping from small area on one side. It was frustrating and we thought we needed a stronger pump. Bodhayan called his friends and 3 of them came from 20 mi. With the help of Google maps in my mobile and using the GPS I could locate and find an AutoZone withing 4 mi and bought tire spanner and a 12v air pump.
Back to the broken car, no attempt with the pump was successful. So we gave up on the proper sized tire and looked at the smaller one. It looked like a rim instead of a tire. We put it in place using Bodhayan’s friend’s jack and was ready to go. Murphy again. Car wont start. It had a weak battery as he admitted of having a few cold start problems. His friend had AAA membership but they refused to help a non-member. 9pm and we needed a jumper cable now. What a pain. I went back to the gas station hoping for some help. They didnt have a jumper kit. We were both out of ideas. Only worst case could be going back on a cab and coming back with preparations next day. But then I saw a cab driver coming back to his cab with a coffee. I casually asked if he could help with jumpstarting and to my surprise he said yes !
Jumpstart was successful in the first try. We profusely thanked the guy. Before him I asked a few persons with nice cars and pickups and they only knew how to politely say sorry. It was so good to see helping hands to be found in the most unexpected of places.
We all came back in his friend’s car while Bodhayan drove alone at 35mph. Back to home, safe, and with a very important lesson. When he wanted to thank me, I told him to thank my advisor, without whole mail about my project report I would have been at a small inn somewhere in Alabama by now.