I have had three bad experiences out of the three times I have been involved with changing tires.

The first time I had to change a tire, one of my dorm-mates was driving a group of us to go see The Tuxedo (one of Jackie Chan’s only bad movies). The guy driving the car was an idiot and didn’t yield when merging onto the IH-35 frontage road from Dean Keaton. We hit another car and spun around. Luckily no one was hurt but we did bang up the woman’s car some and gave her a flat tire. She was very pissed off of course. We tried to help her change her tire but the ground was not level so the weight of the car bent the car jack in half. She became even more pissed with good reason.

The second time occurred when I was employed at a blacksmith shop as a summer job. My car (really my brother’s Subaru Forester but I was using it over the summer) got a flat on the way to work. I jacked the car up and got the tire off when the car rolled off the jack. I had been an idiot and not but on the parking break. You would think a mechanical engineering student would have thought things through better. The car hit its front axle which made me concerned that I seriously broke something. Luckily I was able to get a hydraulic jack from my work to lift my car so I could finish changing the tire.

The Monday before last (11/28/2011) was the third time I had to change a tire. I was heading to the UT campus to give a presentation from north Austin when I had a blowout on Mopac (Loop 1). This was one of my worst fears; To have a flat tire on a highway. After the first two incidents, I was worried about changing the tire especially since it was rush hour and the flat was on the driver’s side of the car so car were whizzing by. I finished putting on the donut and lowered the car back down when I realized that the donut was flat as well. I called my brother and a friend to see what they thought I should do. My brother thought I should try to slowly drive to a gas station (I was near an exit) and fill up the tire an get home and fix my real tire. after talking to them, I looked again at my tire and I decided it was too low (on the rim) to drive on. I called AAA to get them to tow me back to my house. Luckily, the AAA guy had a compressor on his truck and was able to fill my tire up. After he was don, I got in my car to leave but my battery had died while I waited. I was able to flag the AAA guy down before he left and got a jump. I was finally able to get home and I decided to get new tires the next day.

Lesson to be learned is to not have me help you change tires since things will go wrong.