4th of July Weekend

Hi everyone! I am going to work on getting caught up on blogs within next few days. I hope all of you had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. Mine definitely had its up's and downs, but more up's!

I will share my funny story with you first. 

My daughter and I are driving to the camping site about an hour and fifteen minutes from our house. We are on the turnpike and a light comes on stating I have low tire pressure. This is really weird because we just bought brand new tires for the Lincoln less than a week ago and it cost us upwards of $1,000. So we hit a construction site and it closes from two lanes to one lane and no shoulder room. All of a sudden I hear bump bump bump bump and knew it was my tire. Debating on stopping or trying to make it through the construction zone, I knew I had to stop. Since there was no room on shoulder I had to pull off in grass at about 40 degree angle. I call my husband (which is hour away) and tell him what happened. Okay I might have been yelling and cussing just a little, or maybe alot. Either way he tells me he is going to call AAA and have them tow me to nearest tire place. Well I call him back a few minutes later and AAA won't come help me unless my husband is there because he is card holder. My sister called and suggested I call the highway patrol. My husband was going to head down but I told him there was no sense and I would call highway patrol to help me. I called and apologized for bugging them with a flat tire, but I was in construction zone and had no way to change my tire where I was. My husband told me not to drive any further because I would ruin the rim. They said they were going to dispatch a trooper to come help me. Well less than two minutes, this big buff state trooper pulls up. He looks like this except he was a white guy and maybe not as muscular. Even my daughter said " Mom his face is red and I think its because his shirt is to tight" LMAO!

He gets out and I explain that I do know how to change a tire but can't do it where I was. He shook his head and said " yeah you are right, you definitely can't change it on this surface" Thanks Mr. Intelligent! I asked him how far the construction went on and he replied at least another two miles or so and we didn't have any choice but to drive down the road a little bit. I got in and slowed traffic down to about 10mph on the turnpike! We got on other side of bridge and I stopped on shoulder. There was only about 1 foot between my vehicle and the others in the construction, but we didn't have any other choice if the tire was going to be changed. Okay here comes the FUN part!!!

He pulls out his jack and lug wretch and I pull out my spare tire. He starts to loosen the lug nuts and then looks and me and said " I have problems bending over" Confused I looked at him and said I can help you" He then went on to tell me about a year ago doing the exact same thing, he pulled two disks in his back and now he can't bend or do much else. I was saying to myself, are you freaking kidding me? Mr. Muscles can't change a tire. I got the first jack under my Lincoln and jacked it up enough to get my tire off. I pulled it off and threw it on the side of the road and went to put the spare on. The vehicle wasn't high enough and the jack was all the way up. I said " Oh crap" and then he looked at me and said " yeah I was thinking the same thing". I started looking around for wood or anything else I could put under the jack to get some more lift. I had another jack in back of vehicle so I got that one out and put under disk of tire and jacked it up some more to get the spare on. About this time my knees are scraped up and I feel like I am going to puke. Those 20 inch tires are freaking heavy and the asphalt is HOT! He is just sitting there watching the whole damn time. I get the tire on and removed the jacks and just then my BIL and his nephew pull up. I told the trooper it was my BIL because he kind of bowed up because they looked like serious rednecks with no shirt, shorts and boots (they were noodling) when my sister called them to come help. So my BIL walks up and I told him I had it all done and then the trooper had the freaking balls to ask my BIL to finish tightening the lug nuts and for me to come back to his car and fill out a form stating he helped me! At this point I am hot sick and tired. It was freaking humorous though! This big muscle guy sits there and watches me change a tire on side of road. I know the people passing by had to think there was a problem with this whole picture. 

At that moment I realized that I did learn a valuable skill growing up. My dad did in fact teach me how to change my own tire and it has come in handy many times in my life and especially this weekend in the conditions I had to change one in.