Exactly What You Don't Want to See When You Leave Work

And, no, I'm not talking about your boss with a stack of things which need to be finished before you leave - although that's bad, too.

So, here's how it went down. I leave work and head for my truck, with the plan of running a couple of errands and then heading home. Apparently, this is not what the universe had planned for me. When I got to my truck, I noticed that it was listing slightly. My immediate thought was "Ah fuck!" as I knew this probably meant I had a flat. Sure enough, one of the rear tires was about two-thirds down, and I could see the head of the offending screw. Luckily, there was enough air left that I could drive the quarter mile to a gas station and fill the tire up enough to get to the tire shop. Yes, I could have changed the tire or called AAA. But changing a tire in the middle of a blacktop in Arizona on a summer afternoon is not exactly my first choice, and calling AAA would have taken longer and been a bigger pain in the ass than just topping it off. (You know, thinking about it, I still need to get an roadside kit set up for this truck - maybe I'll try to remember to add a can of fix-a-flat or whatever the hell it's called.)

So, I made it to the gas station, topped it off, and headed off to get it fixed. Luckily, there's a place a few miles down the road from where I was, so I just went there. They got the tire fixed up just fine, but it took me sitting there for about an hour - it was about 5 PM and they were backed up some, so I completely understand, but it still kind of sucked. Of course, this prevented me from completing one of my errands (that place closed at 6, which was just about the time they finished with my tire so that one will have to happen this afternoon), but I got the others finished. It just annoyed me a bit. Luckily, the tire fix was only $12, which is about the cheapest car fix you can get.

To be perfectly honest, I would have expected something like this to happen much sooner. I've lived in my current apartment for about a year and a half, and for probably half that time the street has been torn up as they work on putting in a light rail line. Fine. I support public transit and if they get it done in time, I may actually be able to use to get to work, which would be nice. But it means that there is all the debris which goes with such an undertaking. They way my luck usually runs, I would have expected a screw/nail flat, a chipped windshield, something of that nature. I'm just surprised it took this long for it happen.