How to Change a Flat…. First Hand!

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with a friend of mine named Will. Randomly he walks over to my car and shows me that there is a gash in my tire, which is all the way through the metal wiring that holds the rubber together. I just let it go because it wasn’t had at that time. Fast-forward a few days. I am driving and I notice my steering wheel is shaking while I drive. At that point I noticed that a piece of rubber is actually missing from the outer part of the tire. Again I procrastinated changing the tire. At this point I am going to describe my experience of getting a flat tire last night at 1 AM.

I was on my way home from hanging out and watching Betty White on SNL with my friend Aaron, when I start hearing my tired to flop. I knew that it was going flat but I had hoped to get back to my apartment. At that point it went completely flat, right before the Greystone Exit on I-26. At that point I text my friend Sara to tell her, just in case something happened to me. But thankfully she offered to bring help to get it changed. After text messaging her, I decided that I would just try and “limp” up the hill at the exit, so that I could be in a well-lit area. Once I got there, I stopped and got all the stuff out of the trunk I needed to change the tire; the Jack, the Spare tire, and Lug Wrench.

I made a sad attempt to put the jack under the car, because I forgot that it had a special place under the door that it went. After that epic failure, I was going to just wait until Chris, Sara and Rachel got there, but a guy in a wrecker showed up to go into the Exxon. He was nice enough to come over and show me where to put the jack, and also help me loosen the Lug Nuts. At that point I was able to get the car jacked up and proceeded to take the lug nuts completely off as to get the eviscerated tire off. I got three of them off with no issue, however, the last one didn’t come off… the entire bolt broke off.

After getting the lug nuts off, I attempted to get the tired off, so I wouldn’t look too completely helpless, but failed at that too. Only succeeded in getting my hands really dirty. Thankfully my friends got there at that point and were able to put the other tire on in less than 5 minutes. It was actually really funny because it was Sara, Meghan, Rachel, Chris, and his friend Mikey. I felt like such a failure, But I learned how to change a tired from first hand experience, and I also learned that I have some great friends!!