It's warm

The recent wave of warm weather that has enveloped the area coincided with my needed to get some work done on my wife's car.

The problem began a few weeks ago when it seemed that one of the two front tires on the vehicle began to lose air. We found it low on a Tuesday morning. I re-inflated the tire only to find it totally flat a few days later.

Fortunately, none of this led to wife being stranded on the road (she doesn't USA the car much other than local grocery shopping, medical appointments, and occasional lunches.

We had the tire supposedly "repaired" last week but, the problem resurfaced two days ago stranding her at home and causing her to miss a medical appointment.

I was unable to give the problem any attention until today and as the summer sun started to bake the area, I was faced with changing actors in my driveway.

In my younger days, this would not have been viewed as a daunting task but it became one today.

The first step was to empty the contents of the trunk in order to get at both the spare tire and the jack.

The trunk had become a secondary storage facility and this step took some time and effort.

I quickly worked up a sweat and probably should have strongly considered changing into "work clothes" but didn't.

The next step was to get down on the ground to properly place the jack in the one position that the manufacturer intended you to use to jack up the car utilizing the "killer bee" scissor jack that was provided with the vehicle. The scissor jack was conveniently located under a panel in the trunk and since it was never used, you almost had to insert yourself within the trunk to gain enough leverage to remove it from it's hidden perch.

Having extracted the scissor jack and located the proper position on the undercarriage of the vehicle I was able to get the car raised and began to remove the lug nuts. This turned out to be a difficult task as I only had the manufacturer's provided lug wrench which is too short to provide very much torque. I wound up stepping on the wrench (a precarious position given my size) to break the lug nuts loose.

Having accomplished this step, I removed the flat tire and positioned the spare tire into position and had hand tightened to lug nuts onto the wheel when I needed to straighten myself up and stretch from the strain that I had put my under utilized muscles through in these tasks. I made the mistake of using the vehicle as a support when I stood up. I realized too late that I had committed a cardinal sin and I hadn't set the parking brake so the car promptly and uncerimoniously fell off the jack.

I was really lucky that I had placed the two lug nuts on the tire at opposite positions so it fell pretty much in place and the only ground I lost was I needed to jack up the car again to get the rest of the lug nuts tightened properly.

At this point I was dirty from coming into contact with the tires and drenched in sweat.

All of these efforts were completed and this then led to my sitting at a mall sweaty and bored... It was a nice day and I thought, at a minimum, we should be spending the day outside and in dome close proximity of a body of water.

I was pleased and fortunate to find a lounge in the mall and proceeded to kick back and relax while doing some people watching....