Car Trouble, Oh Yeah

No! This was supposed to be the post title I didn't use a couple of weeks ago. If I were the kind of person who believed that there were no coincidences, that everything happens for a reason, I'd think that there was some sort of cosmic hit out on me or something. Just a bit over a month ago, I was rear-ended on the freeway. Because it was right before the holidays and in the midst of an ice storm, the body shop was backed up, and we didn't get the car back for 20 days. A week and a day after that, in the midst of a savage cold snap, I went out for lunch, and I couldn't get the car started. I had to get it towed to even find out what was wrong with it. As it turned out, it had nothing to do with the cold. We got the car back last night, just in time for Chicago's thirty-degree drop in three hours, snow, and heavy winds. Don't worry, we got it home without any real problem.

Tonight, though, it was a different story. I was minding my own business and driving on a couple of errands when I hit a patented Chicago-freezing-weather pothole. Every time I hit a pothole more directly than I should, I remember a time more than twenty years ago when my brother and I were coming home from a Bruce Springsteen concert and tried to take a backstreet to avoid the massive traffic jam from concertgoers trying to get on the freeway. (In one of those odd synchronicities you run across from time to time, although she and I had never met at that point, Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk [under a different name at the time] was returning from the same show; she was wise enough not to try some lame backstreet.) I hit a pothole about as straight on as a pothole can be hit, and the blow out was immediate. Tonight I was recalling that experience when I realized my ride was suddenly much rougher than it should've been. Sure enough, the front driver's-side tire was as flat as a pancake. If you're in the Chicago area, you already know the implications of this. If you're not, let me just say ten degrees and slush on the roadside. I don't know whether the temperature had anything to do with it or if it was just a particularly ornery bolt, but there was one just that didn't want to come off. I was jumping up and down on the tire iron to make it budge, and nothing much happened for ten or fifteen minutes. It did finally give a little bit, and then I knew I was in business. In addition to all of this, the car fell off the jack twice (or three times? I'm not sure), and I desperately hope that the wheel itself hasn't been damaged. The whole process took fifty minutes to an hour. Amazingly, I think adrenalin got me through the whole episode. My hands were cold at first, but after my gloves got wet and dirty (they started out black, so I don't really have an idea of how filthy they are right now), I just worked with my bare hands but didn't feel especially cold (is that adrenalin or frostbite?). I wasn't quite so sanguine when driving home afterward. Although I couldn't find a Saint Bernard wearing a wooden cask, I did stop at the store to get myself some brandy to help warm up when I got home. I also stepped into a nice, hot bath.

I understand there were some developments today in the Democratic primaries. I'm sorry to see John Edwards go, and I may have some more to say about that later. Right now, though, I'm just trying to stay warm.