Strangers Are Neat
Mar. 1st, 2006 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluebren_livejournalSo my car's had this problem where the steering wheel jiggles back and forth. Wasn't a control issue, but it made things very, very bumpy. Worrisome. And it'd been getting progressively worse to where, today, it felt like I was driving on at least one flat tire.
Well, SOMETHING was wrong with the right front tire after all because today it exploded. On the way to the tire place. Well, on the way back home to look up where the tire place was exactly, because I'd originally gone out just assuming I'd come across it and didn't. So anyway, nobody was hurt, nothing dangerous, but there I am sitting out on the inner shoulder getting a shortsleeve tan, knowing I don't have a spare tire and finding it odd how completely without a clue I am as to what to do. I called a few friends who don't actually have cars, before I remembered that about them; I stared at the gas stations barely over a street away, not knowing how good of an idea it was to just leave the thing alone; and I ended up just sitting on the hood for a while (catcall count: 2), trying to think. A motorcyclist entertained all and sundry by doing a wheelie and staying in it all the way down the road. I had thought of some friends with cars, but I didn't know how to tell them where I was.
I knew for sure, though, that I wasn't going to be stopped for. I never see anyone stop for people; I never stop for people-- waiting for stoppers was not on the plan list. And then within five minutes a lady had pulled over.
She was a small lady with a big ol' Suburban. Rolls down the window-- "You need some help?" I said yeah, kinda. She was smoking and the wind blew the smoke in my face. She asked what she could do for me and I still hadn't really figured it out myself, so we got nowhere. I mentioned I was surprised that anybody stopped, and she told me a story about breaking down on this same road, waiting an hour. I said I'd just call my friends, and she asked if I was sure and I said Yeah.
I didn't call my friends, because I'm not as close to the ones with cars as the ones without and it seemed like a pretty big favor. Was just to the point of writing not abandoned :) please leave here in the dirt on the hood so I'd feel a little more comfortable heading for the gas station when a second guy came along. He was a real Bubba of a guy, huge, bearded, cap and gut. Well-groomed beard, though. His work shirt wasn't made with enough buttons toward the bottom so the wind blew up the corner flap over his stomach a lot of the time. I have shirts that do that; it's annoying.
He took one look at my tire, which had little frayed wires from underneath pointing out everywhere, it was so torn through, and rattled off the size model number off the top of his head to his friend on the phone. "Do you care whether it's a new or used tire?" (...Not really.) "--She don't care. ... He says he's only got new ones, is that okay?" (Sure.) "--She says that's fine. .... Naw, I think you're gonna have to bring it out here..."
In the end, the friend quoted him a price for the tire and the driving and the labor and he rejected it for me. He jacked the car up, tossed the wheel in the back of his truck and drove me to a different tire place. We also got paint on the way. Turns out he lives in the middle of nowhere and had the suspects of a vandalism-- paint thinner after a newly finished job-- narrowed down to his own neighbors. Another truck passed us in an uncourteous sort of way and the guy told me about how he wasn't such good friends with that driver anymore, after he'd tried to cheat him on the repairs for the paint thinner incident. "I'm not so sure it wasn't him that did it."
I commented to him too about how surprised I was at how people were stopping for me, and he agreed that nobody does that anymore. He told me a story about how his car broke down one night in New Mexico, 60 miles out of the nearest town, and an elderly couple picked him up and drove him all the way back-- back the way they'd been coming from, all 60 miles. He tried to pay them but they wouldn't let him.
I got a $20 tire, and he attached it for me, and told me that his cell phone service provider had a roadside assistance feature, in case I was ever going to switch. I thanked him, and got down his license plate number-- I never found a good moment to ask him his name-- so, in case those can be easily traced or looked up, I can still do something nice for him, or at least not forget. We drove off, and the steering wheel problem had solved itself, though it could use an alignment, which I will get later.
Remind me to post the Cameron Park story too, someday!
Well, SOMETHING was wrong with the right front tire after all because today it exploded. On the way to the tire place. Well, on the way back home to look up where the tire place was exactly, because I'd originally gone out just assuming I'd come across it and didn't. So anyway, nobody was hurt, nothing dangerous, but there I am sitting out on the inner shoulder getting a shortsleeve tan, knowing I don't have a spare tire and finding it odd how completely without a clue I am as to what to do. I called a few friends who don't actually have cars, before I remembered that about them; I stared at the gas stations barely over a street away, not knowing how good of an idea it was to just leave the thing alone; and I ended up just sitting on the hood for a while (catcall count: 2), trying to think. A motorcyclist entertained all and sundry by doing a wheelie and staying in it all the way down the road. I had thought of some friends with cars, but I didn't know how to tell them where I was.
I knew for sure, though, that I wasn't going to be stopped for. I never see anyone stop for people; I never stop for people-- waiting for stoppers was not on the plan list. And then within five minutes a lady had pulled over.
She was a small lady with a big ol' Suburban. Rolls down the window-- "You need some help?" I said yeah, kinda. She was smoking and the wind blew the smoke in my face. She asked what she could do for me and I still hadn't really figured it out myself, so we got nowhere. I mentioned I was surprised that anybody stopped, and she told me a story about breaking down on this same road, waiting an hour. I said I'd just call my friends, and she asked if I was sure and I said Yeah.
I didn't call my friends, because I'm not as close to the ones with cars as the ones without and it seemed like a pretty big favor. Was just to the point of writing not abandoned :) please leave here in the dirt on the hood so I'd feel a little more comfortable heading for the gas station when a second guy came along. He was a real Bubba of a guy, huge, bearded, cap and gut. Well-groomed beard, though. His work shirt wasn't made with enough buttons toward the bottom so the wind blew up the corner flap over his stomach a lot of the time. I have shirts that do that; it's annoying.
He took one look at my tire, which had little frayed wires from underneath pointing out everywhere, it was so torn through, and rattled off the size model number off the top of his head to his friend on the phone. "Do you care whether it's a new or used tire?" (...Not really.) "--She don't care. ... He says he's only got new ones, is that okay?" (Sure.) "--She says that's fine. .... Naw, I think you're gonna have to bring it out here..."
In the end, the friend quoted him a price for the tire and the driving and the labor and he rejected it for me. He jacked the car up, tossed the wheel in the back of his truck and drove me to a different tire place. We also got paint on the way. Turns out he lives in the middle of nowhere and had the suspects of a vandalism-- paint thinner after a newly finished job-- narrowed down to his own neighbors. Another truck passed us in an uncourteous sort of way and the guy told me about how he wasn't such good friends with that driver anymore, after he'd tried to cheat him on the repairs for the paint thinner incident. "I'm not so sure it wasn't him that did it."
I commented to him too about how surprised I was at how people were stopping for me, and he agreed that nobody does that anymore. He told me a story about how his car broke down one night in New Mexico, 60 miles out of the nearest town, and an elderly couple picked him up and drove him all the way back-- back the way they'd been coming from, all 60 miles. He tried to pay them but they wouldn't let him.
I got a $20 tire, and he attached it for me, and told me that his cell phone service provider had a roadside assistance feature, in case I was ever going to switch. I thanked him, and got down his license plate number-- I never found a good moment to ask him his name-- so, in case those can be easily traced or looked up, I can still do something nice for him, or at least not forget. We drove off, and the steering wheel problem had solved itself, though it could use an alignment, which I will get later.
Remind me to post the Cameron Park story too, someday!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 07:44 pm (UTC)Great story!
Date: 2006-03-08 12:43 am (UTC)Thanks for the lift!
Kade
Pun intended, I hope
Date: 2006-03-08 04:45 am (UTC)(I don't know any Kades... might I ask how you found me?) :o