Anniversary Punctured

Its been a year since we have been together. For a year she stood right besides me. All loyal & loving. And today... of all the days, when we should be celebrating our anniversary, she throws up her first problem.

All those who have not guessed it by now, I am talking about my car. And the problem was a flat tire. But before I get into the details, time for some education.

Ever had a flat tire in India? Inside the hard exterior tire is a rubber tube which holds the air. In USA, there is no tube. Just the tire which holds the air.

Enough enlightenment. Back to my heart-break (almost).

During lunch, I realised that my dear car's left front tire has a nail in it (anything going wrong with your car when its close to Friday evening is disastrous). Now here is the beauty of the situation. The nail was in such a spot that it was not leaking out any air. If I drove the car, maybe the nail would go in more and create a wider hole. Maybe the nail is just on the surface. Maybe not. If I took the nail off, the air leak would start. Or...Maybe not. Maybe the nail has not gone deep enough. Did remind me of life where we sometimes hold onto something not appropriate (relationships, or a job), or not take risks, with the fear that letting it go will bring in something worse. You just try to make peace with the situation.

So here I was, wondering if I should drive and look for a tire guy, or I should just stand and stare at the beautiful way this nail has implanted itself into my cars tire.

By now if you are bored and wish to surf another web page, you have my blessings!

Anyhoo, as any sane person would do, I did the former.

Fortunately there is a tire shop close to work. And the process is pretty simple. But before I get too monotonous, here is a picture.



Stab




The process: Pull the nail out, jam in a screw driver to make the hole a little more bigger while you can hear the air hiss out. Grab a strip of rubber+glue mixture whose radius is slightly more than that of the hole and shove it down the hole till its blocked. The rubber will gel in with your tire. Fixing a flat had never been simpler or faster.

Back to life. Sometimes, the process of fixing a problem might make it worse initially. But finally it gets better. Admitting to your boss that you made a mistake and cant make the deadline will intially get you yelled at. But you might get some backup in terms of man-power to hit the deadline. Ok, lame example. But armies did retreat when they were losing a battle. It was not an act of cowardice. But it gave them time to regroup and launch a counter-attack.

Sometimes, to fix the puncture, you have make it wider. You might have to fill in more air into the tire once its fixed. But it does get fixed.

The things a simple puncture can teach you..... apart from the fact that the first picture taken off my new camera phone aint too bad.