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2010/07/05: And how did YOUR 4th of July end?

Created: Mon 05 Jul 2010 01:57:56 EDT

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So ... since we live in America, we went to watch Fourth of July fireworks, of course. It was p.cool, even if they did occasionally seem to go off a little close to where the crowds were sitting.

My dad drove me home; along the way, I got him to stop telling a dirty joke which he admitted was really stupid ("Dad, just because I'm old enough to hear dirty jokes doesn't mean I want to hear them from my father." "It gets better!" "I don't want to know what constitutes 'better' from that."). Shortly thereafter, on the highway, the front passenger-side wheel started making funky noises. He pulled over; there was no breakdown lane, so it was off the road and onto dirt. We were just past someone's driveway, too. Yep, turns out the tire was flat as a pancake!

It wasn't a catastrophic scenario, though; after my dad managed to stop swearing, he got out a jack, a lug wrench, and the spare tire. The plan was now to limp back to my dad's home, wait until his wife got back (she'd taken a separate car so she could go straight home with the foster kid), and take me back in her truck. We got off three of the nuts with no problem, but one of them was stuck, and even throwing our whole weight against it, the most we accomplished was bending the lug wrench.

About this time, who showed up but the old guy whose house we were right next to. He offered assistance, and while my dad was calling his wife, the guy came up with the bright idea of placing the lug wrench in a horizontal position, and then lifting it up with the jack. Success, right before she arrived!

Next problem: instead of lifting up the car, the jack was simply digging itself into the dirt. Next to arrive was a couple of dudes who initially reminded the stepmom of Jay and Silent Bob ("Dude, your tire's flat! ... Dude, you can't get the wheel off unless you lift the car up with the jack!"); one of them stayed in the car the whole time, but the voiciferous one offered the idea of putting some sort of board under the jack as it lifted up the car.

Two "Search and Rescue" cars showed up, just to watch the proceedings. The old guy's daughter fetched a small board of wood which worked much better than the textbook the dude was offering. After a somewhat unsettling moment in which we discovered that the handbrake needed to be on so that the car wouldn't simply roll off the jack, we successfully lifted the car up and put the spare on. Everyone drove off, relieved (whew!) ... except that as I was putting the flat tire in the backseat of the car, it scraped my hand somehow (badum-tsh).

All this after I slept horribly last night. TL;DR you loonies all get an extra day with which to faff about giving commands to Create.swf Adventures.

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