Home.<\/p>\n
Got to the arena and discovered I had a half-flat tire. I had had\u00a0a reader call me yesterday and ask me to sign some books before the evening program tonight. I’d gone home not feeling well—I think it’s the Zamboni fumes in the underventilated arena. But I was to come back tonight, sign the requested books, and rejoin Jane—who’d called and asked if I could bring her more batteries. She’d also forgotten her seat cushion. So I got to the rink, paid my\u00a05 dollars for parking,\u00a0but the tire felt decidedly\u00a0funny, so once I parked, I looked at it, left rear tire—half flat. Well, I was at the arena, on the far side of the parking lot, near the entry; I\u00a0took her the seat cushion and got 3 lbs of batteries (I swear) through security; and then I had Jane call OSG across the arena and ask if OSG could get Jane home if I went and got that tire aired up before it was impossible to drive. I am mechanically ept at quite a few things, but changing a tire in a parking lot in the dark and the cold is not my forte. So before I left the arena,\u00a0I called the person who wanted the books signed and asked if she could get to Customer Service so I could sign them, explaining I would do that before going to take care of the flat tire, but she wanted to do it tomorrow.<\/p>\n
So, of course it’s now a case of bucking all the inbound arena traffic to get out. And I’m forcing my little Forester upstream and trying to go the other way, which, thanks to one gate-guard, was finally able to do; and I went over to Division, which is usually a good bet for filling stations; but the one I met first I\u00a0know is in a rough area, having been the scene of several crimes—that one’s not where I want to stop; and the other I was in the wrong lane for, so I hoped on an outside bet to make it to the local tire emporium. They’re closed. So I found a station I know, and no,\u00a0they didn’t have air, but the nextdoor auto wash did. So I go over to a deserted, closed business, drop 75 cents in the slot and\u00a0aired the thing. If I’m very, very lucky, it’s flat because the tire was allowed to get low, and it lost its seal, and airing up will hold until I can get to the tire place and get it seen to tomorrow morning. I fear I’m going to have to get all new tires, because that one\u00a0 in particular is not trustable after the abuse it had, and the others weren’t that great to start with. If\u00a0the tire\u00a0is still fully aired up and holding in the morning I may get to go to the rest of the Nationals; if it isn’t I’m likely to go over, air up, take Jane to the arena and\u00a0spend my morning over at the tire dealership. Jane really, really loves the dance: if it were the pairs to be missed she’d be taking care of it; it’s dance, currently, so I see to it. Fair’s fair, and the tire has got to get fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Home. Got to the arena and discovered I had a half-flat tire. I had had\u00a0a reader call me yesterday and ask me to sign some books before the evening program tonight. I’d gone home not feeling well—I think it’s the Zamboni fumes in the underventilated arena. But I was to come back tonight, sign the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}