If She Can Look That Good Fixing a Flat, She's a Keeper!

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Let's face it, there's never a good time to get a flat tire, but it helps if it happens during daylight hours, in mild weather, and when you're not in a hurry to get somewhere. But, that's rarely the case.

In the United States, approximately three tire punctures occur every second, amounting to 259,200 flat tires per day, and over 94 million flat tires each year. Statistics also show that every driver will experience, on average, up to five flat tires in their lifetime.

The last time I got a flat tire, pre-2023, was in January of  2010. I remember getting the flat in my work van while parked in a gravel-covered driveway outside a new house I was helping a friend and fellow plumber do the finish on. 

When I arrived in the morning, I parked my van in the street a good distance from the house, but by the afternoon, when a space in the driveway became available, I pulled my van into the driveway to get closer to the house. The driveway was covered with medium-sized gray stones, and I didn't think there was anything wrong with pulling in; others had done it earlier in the day. I didn't see the galvanized roofing nails the roofers spilled because they were hidden in the similar colored stones, and by mid-afternoon, my passenger rear tire was starting to go flat. I looked more closely and saw the flat head of a roofing nail buried in my tire. 

I moved my van back onto the street where I could change the tire on a hard surface. It was in single digits that day and, with a howling wind, even colder, and changing that tire really sucked. Busted open some knuckles doing it too… 

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In 2009, I borrowed my middle son’s Honda Accord so my other two sons and I could drive together and meet my parents for a late lunch on the North Shore. My oldest son was supposed to get gas, but when he saw the tank was almost half full, he blew it off, figuring we could stop on the way home. My youngest was supposed to provide Mapquest directions, and he typed in the wrong restaurant address. As a result, we began by heading in the wrong direction. After I asked him where the fuck he was taking us and he realized his mistake, we had to turn around and right the ship and head towards Peabody…

While speeding up Route 95 in the fast lane, trying to make up some time, the car started to sputter, and I pulled into the narrow shoulder in the fast lane next to the Jersey barrier, where it died. I immediately put on the emergency blinkers and called 911…

By the time the state trooper arrived, we had called my middle son, and that's when he finally told us his gas gauge was broken and stuck on 3/8 of a tank. We'd run out of fucking gas…

The trooper had a tiny plastic gas can, and he poured just enough fuel into the tank to get us to a gas station. He jumped out into heavy traffic and stopped it so we could cross the highway and get on the off-ramp almost across from where we broke down to get to a gas station we could see just off the highway… 

While fueling up, I saw that the passenger rear tire was losing air. We made it to the restaurant, albeit two hours late, and by then, the tire was almost flat. We had picked up a nail in the breakdown lane, and after eating what ended up being an early dinner, I changed the tire in the parking lot. At dinner, we told my parents the details of what had happened, and I'm sure they must've thought me and my three kids were total fucking losers!

It was a bad day, a humiliating one, to say the least, but I do remember laughing our asses off on the way home because that’s all we could do. Who the fuck has that kind of luck anyway? We at least owned the category…

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Before that, I only remember getting one other flat. I was dating my wife back in 1978 and when I picked her up from college in Boston and on our way home to her house in Sharon, we picked up a nail on the VFW Parkway.

It came at a time when our relationship was being challenged by distance; she was going to school in Boston, and I was reconditioning cars in Walpole. We were both pretty quiet in the car, and I wasn't sure where our relationship was going. Getting the flat and changing the tire together was the icebreaker we needed. Less than a year later, we were engaged…

From the flat in 2010, I drove 13 years without getting another, and other than keeping the tire pressure where it should be, I never obsessed over getting a flat. Then, one rainy night, late on July 2nd of 2023, while I was pulling out of a parking garage in Boston and inserting my ticket into the machine, my dashboard lit up and displayed low tire pressure left rear with a little picture of the four tires. The normal tire pressure is 34 psi, and the display said the one in question was only 22.

I pulled beyond the gate and got out and looked at the tire, and right at twelve o’clock, in plain sight, embedded in the space between the raised tread, was the Phillips head of a galvanized sheetrock screw, the threaded portion, and shank buried deep in the tire. 

There was some construction going on in the garage, and I assumed I had been unlucky and picked up the screw as I pulled out. I felt around the head, and it wasn’t leaking, so I told my oldest son, who was with me, that we could limp home at low speed on side roads, avoid the highway, and make it home where we could change the tire in the morning. We made it home with no issues.

In the morning, I went out and started loosening the lug nuts. We recently had an oil change at the dealership, and the mechanic rotating the tires used an impact wrench on the lug nuts, and they were on fucking tight. The short OEM lug wrench started to bend under pressure, and even after switching to my four-way lug wrench, it still wasn’t enough to break 'em loose, so I got a three-foot piece of steel pipe for leverage, and with my son helping, the lug nuts finally loosened. Once we got them all loose, including the locking one, I jacked up the car and installed the full-size donut, which, on that SUV, was hiding under the vehicle. The spare was only 20 psi when I dropped it, so I inflated it to the required 60 psi. 

Because it was July 3rd, most places were closed for the holiday. One place in Norton was open, and they were able to patch the tire and get me back on the road by noontime.

Just three weeks later, I was in the middle lane of 95 North, driving solo, going 80 mph, when I heard a loud pop. I hoped it was something I ran over… My dashboard lit up again, alerting me that the passenger side front tire had gone from 34 psi to 6 psi in a matter of seconds.

This time, I was heading into Cambridge, so I pulled over into the breakdown lane, put on my emergency flashers, and immediately started to remove the tire…

I got three lug nuts off with no problem using the four-way lug wrench and the steel pipe for additional leverage, but I was having trouble with the fourth, so I decided to get out the special socket for the locking lug nut and try my luck removing that. But, because all the lugs were put on with an impact wrench at the dealership, when I put pressure on the locking lug nut, I could feel the internal pins starting to collapse. That’s when I called AAA. 

The tow truck driver had a breaker bar, but when he tried, the pins folded like dominoes, and the vehicle had to be towed. I told the driver to take it to the same place where I got the first tire patched, and I decided that maybe the OEM tires, which had 51,000 miles, needed to be replaced and the locking lug nuts removed in favor of standard ones. 

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I purchased four Yokohama 65,000 miles tires and had them replace the locking lug nuts with the standard ones included in the OEM tire kit, and for all that, I paid a premium price. (ouch!)

I purchased a two-foot breaker bar and an assortment of lug nut sockets I'm now keeping in the vehicle. For weeks, I drove cautiously, paranoid I'd get another flat. That's when I started noticing all the cars pulled over on 95 fixing flats. It happens all the time, I guess. I unfairly blame carpenters and builders who drive pickup trucks with rusted tailgates and spill nails and screws onto the highway. This week, I saw a construction company without a tailgate on their pickup, carrying debris that reminded me of when I gutted bathrooms. I passed that pickup truck in a hurry, wanting to stay ahead of anything he might spill on the highway.

Shortly after I got two flats in three weeks, when my youngest son was driving his Volkswagen Golf into Boston to meet me, I had this crazy thought, "I hope he doesn't get a flat…" Within 15 minutes of that thought, no premonition, he called to say he heard a loud pop, and his driver's side front tire went flat. I remember when I originally bought that car and later sold it to him, it came with a full-size spare and not a flimsy little donut. He called AAA.

If you count 'em up, I've had my five flat tires, the national average for one's lifetime, and maybe I'm done. I sure hope so…

In the comments, let me know how many flats you've had…