After the whole racist cop incident we got back underway. We were getting pretty far along, we had crossed into Washington and all was well except for Burt’s whiny punk music. I found some me time and decided to spend it sleeping. (kinda hard to do when you’re packed in like a prized specimen of the perfect race, with a lot of luggage instead of bubble wrap or packing popcorn (since that stuff is a choking hazard and all, and we’re talking a LIVING specimen) but I dozed off soon enough.
Not long enough though. It seems I had barely nestled in to a pile of money, women and cotton candy when I was awakened by what sounded like air escaping instantaneously from a circular rubber tube molded around small reinforcing wire and nylon mesh. And my instincts proved true. It was in fact air escaping and it was in fact a circular rubber air retaining device as I described… a tire. The front left one to be exact.
Burt pulled over (to the right side of the road, as is proper) and as luck would have it we were right by a rest stop. If good luck had been on the ball he would have let bad luck take over just a little earlier where we could have made it actually INTO the rest stop instead of on the other side of a long tall chain link fence… but whatever, he’s luck… he really didn’t owe us any favors and I‘d say he was at least considerate enough to take a break when he did.
The tire was ripped like this months Mr. Beefcake centerfold in Playgirl (that what the mechanic said at least, I’ll take his word for it.) So we figured airing it up again wasn’t enough… we needed something a little less ruined to replace it with. that’s when we decided that a spare tire would be the best plan, and so we got the one that was in the trunk. Glade did most of the work, I’ll admit. I was hesitant to touch the tire that would be likened to a nude man within a couple of hours. Although that must have been a subconscious reasoning for not touching it, as I didn’t yet know the mechanic had gotten this months issue.
We went to put on the small, not so showy or ripped replacement (which will probably never be featured in a women’s entertainment magazine) but alas, it was kinda…. flaccid. It needed to be aired up and we lacked the lung power to do it ourselves. that’s when we decided that we needed something or someone else to do it for us. We asked a couple of truckers if they could do it ( I thought they might since their trucks are equipped with air brakes and I thought there was a good chance that they had an adapter to use for tires. But no luck. I checked out from the group to use the stinker. And I feel it is necessary at this point to tell you that I was SICKLY! After… a while… I rejoined my compadres who were trying to get ahold of their insurance providers to see if they offered roadside assistance. But they didn’t. The other guys wanted to see about maybe hitchin’ a ride into town to get someone to tow us and I was like What?! Why not just get them to air up the tire. And then I realized that that’s what they were actually wanting to do. But I maintained that we still had a good chance of finding a trucker with a typical crude composure and a typical trucker T shirt... like with a woman wearing next to nothing and doing something totally unladylike… and above it usually some name like Harley Davidson (which sounds to me like a pretty white trash name… pretty fitting for an airbrushed whore who has no more decency than to sprawl out all over a motorcycle in a torn up T-shirt that would serve better to mop up a smoothie from the kitchen floor. Or maybe even some spring water or canola oil... Like tuna comes in, sometimes that makes quite a mess on the floor… at least in my experience.)
About this time Good Luck clocked in again and picked up where he left off. He didn’t miss a beat. He obliged on the whole trucker scenario (even down to the T shirt, but I didn’t notice it, Burton did.) He was on the phone with none other than “a pair of double D’s” so we had to wait a little while. But then he got right to it and used his brake lines to air the spare up to 60 PSI (as recommended by manufacturer).
We slapped it on and we were on our way! (when I say slapped I don‘t literally mean slapped, but more in a sort of a general way that just conveys that we did in fact act with some sort of verb or action that securely fastened the tire to the hub… I just said Slapped to save myself from describing the process.)
We made it to Cle Elum, a little biddy town with a service station that had a dog passed out on the floor in front of the counter. The lady on the other side of the counter referred us to a shell station that does tires. We mozy’d on down. He said he had a used tire for $40 or a new one for a hundred or more. We opted for the used one. And had him throw a tire rotation into the $10 labor fee. $50 bucks got us rolling again. We made it the rest of the way into Seattle with minimal hassle.
We made it into Seattle and with a little difficulty we found the place Burt had arranged for us to stay. Jason, burt's sisters friend - a really awesome guy - let us crash on his floor. I didn't sleep well on account of my sickness... so I was in and out of the bathroom all night. We watched a little of "The Deadliest Catch" on the Discovery channel and I slept alright... except for my nightmare about falling off of the fishing boat.
Today we got up... went out to see the city. We drove around by the coast, doing alot of up and down motion. i puked in a trash can. i felt better.
The space needle is pretty awesome. they have these new-fangled interactive kiosk things that let you look at a full 360 degree, minute by minute photo log of the last 24 hours from the top of the needle. also they had a camera that you could opperate with a joystick and pan around and zoom in on stuff. that was cool.
after that we decided to walk to REI and I bought a sleeping bag thats good for weather as low as -15 degrees. Hopefully it wont ever see that kind of cold... but its good to have just in case. I'll probably be really glad I got it when we camp in Canada for the next couple of nights.
we also went to check out the underground market in Pioneer Square, but I started feeling sick again on the way there. I was really cold ... like my bones were iced over... you know? and just achig left and right. I decided to sit down and let Glade and Burton shop some more. Finally we headed back home and i tried out my new sleeping bag for an hour or so.
Then Jason, Burt and I played Settlers of Catan. Its like a glorified Pit meets monopoly I guess. it was pretty fun. Jason kicked our asses.
Now its off to bed. I dunno when I'll be around again.. probably not till we get to Anchorage... we're still 2700 miles out.
More to come!
Evan
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