February 20, 2009

Tyre Changing: An Ordeal

The day I always dreaded came today without any notice and warning. If the fear of tyre changing had a name it will be called tyrophobia (can’t come up with anything else). As usual my loathing towards anything involving manual labour and physical effort is legendary. It can go into the extend of not taking the initiative in regular exercise to not cutting toe nails because it involves bending, crouching and picking up the after effects.
My worst nightmare came true when we earnestly went out after a long sweet slumber for driving to the nearest restaurant (main hobby) for lunch. I have to make a confession at this point, I have been relatively late in honing my driving skills and getting a certified licence to drive. As far as I remember I was illiterate in this basic skill as late as my degree final year (yes I went to college tooo…). I was the pillion rider and front seat critic for many of my unfortunate friends. There are some really hilarious stories involving knocking down water pumbs to endangering human lives in the pursuit of this skill.
Sorry for drifting from the content, ok I cam out to see that the tyres were as flat as my abs (lol) and there was no chance of moving the vehicle. We compromised our eatery joint and had something meagre taking into consideration the impending exercise. I opened sections of my car boot which I never knew existed and was happy to find that all the weapons involved like jacky (I don’t know the spelling and spell check was of no help), spanner, screw drivers and above all a spare tyre.
We got into action as soon as possible, set the jacky and started turning the lever to start the levitation process. It felt good initially but the cranky lever has this unusual way of falling of the jacky after every few rotations. I had to slouch on the road and continue my effort despite of the interruptions, the car started lifting of the floor and our first step felt successful. We looked at each other like the battle was half won unknown to the later ordeal.
The Nut for removing the tyres is concealed with some cover which is clipped into the wheels like they were never apart. This cover was so difficult to remove and we had to involve additional services of a coin, ball point pen, screw driver and lot of patience. This took us agood 10 minuted and we where already loosing patience. The exposed nut bolt gave us so much relief and we waited no longer to start the next process.
The Nut bolt were so tight that despite of my weight on the spanner (which is literally heavy enough to stumble any body) I literally jumped on it and to comfort me my friend who is a serious competitor to my physical excess also tried his best. I think the tyre took sympathy on us and strted undoing with cacking noises. By the time we removed all the four nuts we had digested what we had for lunch. Removing was the major part and replacing the tyre was not so laborious.
One lesson learned from this is that iam really bad with basic things like this and needs lot of improvement, Machines are invented for a reason and that is called laziness cultivation. As a precautionary measure I have checked all the other tyres for fault and fixed the faulty one with immediate effect.


P.S The credit for a successful tyre change goes to my friend who is also a popular tyre reseller and a serial entrepreneur with lot of grandiose dreams. Tyrophobia is fear of cheese, unlike my assumptions. If I was the only one left in the world and a tyre punchered, I would rather walk than take all the effort lol.

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