I drove to get my hair done and parked my Toyota Wish in the basement car park of the mall. When I returned from my excellent salon experience, I found my tire flat as a pancake. I know how this happened - I hit a curb as I was entering the car park. If you haven't driven on the opposite side of the road, you will not understand how hard it is to stay to the right of your lane. So I totally nailed the curb and didn't think anything of it until I started to leave and felt something pulling to the left. I got out and saw the tire. Thank goodness I was still in the parking lot and not on the road yet.
Being the tough Idaho girl that I am, I got out the jack and tools and started to change the tire. I had the tire jacked up, which took a while in and of itself, and then began to take off the bolts. The tool I needed to remove the bolts was stripped out so it wouldn't turn the bolts at all. I thought I was just not strong enough so I went and asked a few people to help me. But they couldn't do it either.
Then I called a tow truck and he was going to change the tire on the spot. He couldn't do it. So he had to tow my car to a tire shop. I rode in the front of the truck with him as he drove my car through rush-hour Singapore traffic. I wasn't too nervous until we hit the 5-lane round about (ugh). The tire shop could fix it but couldn't take my credit card so I had to leave my car there, walk 15 minutes to a train station, get cash from an ATM and then go back and pay the man.
I found my car with the flat tire at 3:00 in the afternoon. I got home at 8:00 pm that night. Mark was in Japan so again missed all the fun (I'm seeing a pattern here). Thank goodness I had Tes at home (my new maid) or I would have been in a pickle. She got the kids from school, gave them a snack, and fed them dinner. I'll tell you all about Tes in another post, but she is amazing! I can't believe my luck with parking garages here.
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