Been driving the last two days from new jersey to TX. In Louisiana, a few miles west of Baton Rouge and the mighty Mississippi river, I had one of those "what the fuck?" moments when my right front tire mysteriously blew up. I didn't hit anything as far as i can tell, unless an armadillo was hiding in my tire well and got its claws dug into the sidewalls. I'm not talking about a nail sized hole... i mean the tire was literally shredded.
So I pulled over to the cozy shoulder of the busy Route 10 during Friday after-work traffic. Thankfully, I had learned to like country music earlier this summer (which came in handy when i was surfing stations in VA through TX) and not ten minutes before having this blowout, I heard a song called "Jesus, Take the Wheel" by a little lady name Carrie Underwood.
For those of you have not enjoyed this twangy piece of molasses ear candy, the song tells the story of a single mother driving home on a snowy night (Christmas Eve, no less) and she's pissed off probably because she's a single mom, so she's driving too fast, hits a patch of ice, and starts spinning out of control. Now if you grew up with nor'easters and blizzards, you would probably have pumped the brake at that point. But perhaps the single mother in the song, like Carrie herself, is from Oklahoma because her safety instinct at that point (with a baby in the backseat) is to throw her hands up and yell "Jesus, take the wheel!"
So, what the hell, I gave it a try too. I stepped out of the car, waiting for the 18 wheelers to blow by first, threw my hands up in exasperation and yelled, "Jesus, fix this tire!" After about fifteen minutes of humming to myself and waving to passerbys--Don't worry 'bout me! Jesus is on his way!--I realized, maybe Jesus couldn't get my spare tire out of my trunk since I had all of my worldly belongings crammed in there. "Okay, Jesus. How about I just get this started and you can take it from there?"
Carrie underwood will never be singing about my life because no one wants to hear a song about a guy fixing a tire by himself while Jesus was probably busy being copilot for some minivan. But, I am very thankful that I was only about 2 miles from Grosse Tete (like, Disgusting Hooter) and a gas station where a toothless man with big ears fixed my tire.
An isolated tire blowout isn't so strange, but following a summer bicycling across the country and experiencing a significantly higher incidence of flat tires, it just seems I'm cursed. I'm a little worried about walking right now for fear I might blow out an ankle... and there's no donut or patch kit for that.
2 comments:
i know i'm late reading this...and hence posting this....but oh my god i was laughing out loud reading it. you're well on the way to taking carrie's (zukes, not underwood) spot as my favorite blogger. now if only you could add some cute pictures of casey, you'd take the title for sure!!
I know that Carrie Underwood calls on Jesus to take the wheel Armin, but that is just a song. We can't take those literally. You probably should've called upon St. Stephen because I think he is the patron saint of travelers. As far as I can tell that would make him more adept at taking the wheel, or changing a tire, than Jesus. Just a thought.
Also, don't forget that Gladyss is the patron saint of parking. So when you're driving in downtown Portland (not that you should be of course, given their amazing public transportation system and our current climate change crisis due to fossil fuels)you can call on her, and she'll jump right out like a professional valet service. Keep it in mind.
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