A WOBBLY WEEKEND

a wobbly weekendI didn’t want to drive… but my wife insisted on driving over to the coast so she could take her bicycle to peddle up and down Highways 1. She left on a Thursday and I flew to catch up with her the following Saturday. When she picked me up from the airport she asked me, “Can you hear that sound?” while turning down the radio. Those are code words for big trouble. If she can hear something on a vehicle, it’s much too, too late.

“Yeah,” I answered, “That’s bad – real bad… That’s metal on metal and means the rotors are shot and we shouldn’t be driving this.” My wife told me the youngest, who’s been driving the SUV, mentioned something to her about the brakes a while back… I told her I wish someone would have mentioned it to me…

We found a mechanic shop and drove straight there. Out of state plates with an emergency… not a good hand of cards to be dealt. The owner of the shop with his thick black mustache and accent chuckled like a professional poker player. It’s never good when strangers in that scenario refer to you as their “Buddy”.

We took a cab back to the house and decided to boogie board on the biggest waves of the year in the Pacific. The other old SUV that is officially referred to as “mine” was waiting for me with problems of his own; a low tire. Really low, but I’ve come to expect the unexpected and was prepared.

I wrestled the compressor, air hose, air chuck, and electrical cord away from the spiders and filled up the tired tire. All the while I was spitting cobwebs from my mouth and pawing them off my face and head like a clumsy bear.

I didn’t think much about my shoulder just six months out of major surgery until after I’d been knocked down and arm barred by the tag team of wicked Pacific waves. I was nursing the cuts on my ankles from the collision with the shoreline before I realized we were running behind in our race with the clock and the closing of a FedEx office I’d never been to… No fear, I’ve never been shy of using all the available horsepower to cheat time…

According to my wife’s cell phone I knew we were close to the FedEx office with about five minutes before the big hand struck twelve and the little one covered up the five. I gunned the big V-10 off a red light to get over into the right turn lane ahead when I heard the old familiar sound of a tired tire giving up the ghost.

I slowed as the oversized SUV loped on the blown rear driver’s side tire. I made the turn and kept creeping forward until the rim and pavement chewed through the rubber. I wheeled it over tight to the curb, hit the flashers and we started jogging toward the Fedex office.

On the way home the highway patrolman just the Arizona side of the Colorado River and border finished crossing the “T’s” and dotting the “I’s” on my punching bag of a weekend with a speeding ticket…

There are days we call “good” and days we refer to as “bad”. Sometimes it takes really hard days to put things into a proper perspective.

There was a time I’d have cussed a day or a wobbly weekend like that and swore it was a plan hatched in the devil’s kitchen…I’ve had enough real life days in this fallen world to know that it was a taxing and expensive weekend… but not a bad one.

Each day is a gift… I just forget and need to be reminded sometimes…

It was a wobbly weekend, but a good one to be sure…