Tread carefully

(apologies for the poor quality of the pics. I took them on my cell phone, and it was made before cells had mega pixel cameras) 

Last week I was coming home from Westville on the concrete highway. I was in the fast lane next to a pantechnicon, when I heard an almighty bang kaplunk, slap slap, gonk, kapow, crack, crack, crack. It was coming from my car, not the truck, and I nearly had a seizure (the fact that I’m writing this blog means I survived). I didn’t know what to do, there was no garage, no houses or shops to pull over at. I wondered, should I stop here on the highway, risking being squashed by a truck or mugged by someone who might pretend to help (now don’t go thinking I’m being neurotic because I heard a story of a guy who had a flat tyre and stopped to change it, three friendly guys stopped to help him, then drove his car into a neighbouring country, leaving him on the roadside, without his phone, laptop and lunch) or do I risk being blown-up in my car by driving home? I decided, I’d take my chances driving home. So I crawled. There wasn’t any smoke or engine smell, so I just crept, kaplunking all the way and praying for green lights. I made it home and went to check the side the noise had come from- there were huge chunks of tread missing from the tyre. Don’t think that you’d never use a re-tread because they’re dangerous, because this was NOT a re-tread. The AA came and changed the tyre saying “re-treads can be dangerous”, then corrected himself by saying “Oh, this isn’t a re-tread” and “I’ve never seen this happen before”. Over the years many people attending to things that have gone wrong for me, have said those very same words (like the electrician who said it after I was almost electrocuted by touching the hot tap, but that’s another whole tale).

the desk where you pay for all four tyres

The morning after the de-treading, I got up earlier so there was time to gird my loins before going to the garage to have the tyre story sorted. Now I say girded because workshops and garages are very overwhelming for me. I think it has to do with those polystyrene cups at water machines, the grease, overalls and testosterone fumes. I sprayed extra perfume on my wrists thinking if it gets too gamey I can always snort them. So I get there early and there’s already a queue, then I realise, I do not have a book to read and if I decided to read the car mags on the table, I didn’t have my reading glasses. I cursed under my breath. One of the mechanics/tyre guys checked out the damaged tyre (told me it was just old and had started to split) and then advised me to change them all. I almost asked for a brown paper bag at that moment, but remembered the terror on the freeway and decided to get them all done (I don’t neglect my car and all tyres had the legal amount of tread on them, except for the offending one which did have lovely tread on the parts that still had tread). This salesman could feel my vulnerability and honed in like a jack-hammer, perhaps he had a whiff of my perfume and interpreted it as a sign of weakness.

Did she also forget her glasses?

So off to the waiting room I went. Now I have to be honest, this is not a bad looking garage if you’re a man. It is black and yellow and chromed with that rubbery floor stuff with small raised circles all over it. In the waiting room there is a water cooler, big screen TV, fairly comfy chairs and a carpet mottled black and brown- I think it was the way it was dyed not from grease and sand (clever colour choice). It is also air-conditioned.

I relax a bit, thinking, well, it’s cooler than my car and I’m comfortable, how bad can it be? There were about five others in the waiting room, they all had their reading glasses with them or they didn’t need them so were reading their newspapers. One woman was lap-topping, and another just gazed into the workshop area blankly (she obviously hadn’t prepared herself very well, because I could see she was trying to hold it together and her dazed look wouldn’t allow her to smile at me). So I sighed and relaxed into my chair (black artificial leather, also a good choice). There is rugby on the TV, but the sound is down thankfully. I wonder why they don’t put some wors rolls by the water cooler, or some biltong or even a couple of samoosas. I guess they don’t really want rugby fans loitering about getting all social after their cars are done. Hang on a minute, I see the ball is round. It is soccer on the TV, but I don’t know the rules of either very well, and can usually only tell the difference by the ball shape, yet I don’t see a reason to use a funny shaped ball to play rugby, a round one seems perfectly sensible to me.

The view

I glance over the road, train lines look grey in a grey world highlighted by an almost white hot sky, litter clings to a barbed wire fence. 

Rather than watching the cars slide past across my view and rather than watch the soccer, I decide to find my microscopic note book and jot down thoughts for my blog. My car is sitting without wheels in the distance and the queue for the alignment is getting longer, this will take a while. I’m comfortable and jotting ideas and smiling to myself. It is quiet except for the odd clang of a wheel spanner falling. These tyre guys wield those spanners like ninjas. One has his spanner in his belt making a cross over his bum, ready at any moment to swing it into action, a veritable Darth Vader in overalls.

I jot, and think, quite pleasant actually, and then……. someone comes in with a vacuum cleaner. A small vacuum that has lost all its brushes and nozzles, because it is quite obviously only used for vacuuming carpets in cars. It only has the pipe coming from the machine and, I kid you not, that guy knelt down (because the pipe was too short to stand) and he vacuumed the whole carpet (about 8 square metres of it) with the 2 inch end of that pipe. If I am not at the end of a vacuum cleaner pipe (and that’s not often, ‘cause I’m a failed housewife) then I can’t tolerate that noise. It is like swarms of things in my head, it drones and butchers my thoughts) so I stop jotting and speak to the vacuum man, who complains bitterly from his crawling position about not having a longer pipe or any brushes. I think to myself that there are some guys on the workshop floor who would be better suited to vacuuming with a short pipe, seeing their knuckles are almost touching the floor when they walk. Earlier I saw one of them rolling two tyres in tandem across the floor and then hoisting them up. Tyres in their rims are heavy and this has lengthened their arms somewhat. I resign myself to the fact that I will spend another hour waiting and trying to hum a tune to the drone. Finally, silence again, and the vacuum operator smiles at me as he leaves. I am too exhausted to jot or think, so I wait and almost doze but stop myself because I may snore and just become part of this testosterone hell.

Finally my car gets aligned and I’m told about the importance of rotating the tyres every 6 months. NO amount of imagination or clonking sounds created in my head allow me to see myself doing this again in 6 months time.

Back then the cars had a trap door that we could pull open with a chain to check our tire wear.  Tim Flock  

For any guys who may be interested in these trap doors here's an article...just looking at the website reminds me of my ordeal http://www.circletrack.com/featuredvehicles/ctrp_0711_fireball_grand_national/photo_13.html