flat tire and dad's teaching....

We were going to Kaohsiung to buy the Igloo maxcold 40q cooler 3 weeks ago; The 5d4n camping trip was a challenge to us and after hesitating and struggling about a cooler or not, I had decided to invest in one of them. The choice was simple but yet to decide which item to buy was difficult. One can get a cheap Igloo Maxcold series cooler from the local Costco store easily however they only sell the 58q version instead of the 40q which was way to big for us. The Coleman was a good choice however it is darn expensive – NT 4k…The Igloo 40q is only sold in one of the chain mart and I called up the store but the lady who answered the call was unable to tell me exactly which model they had. So I decided to pay a visit. I took a nap after returning from my long night shift and took of in the evening.

Ving halted me from getting into the car as the one of the neighbor told Ving that we had a flat tire.

The rear wheel over the left side was flat and I decided to pump up the tire and drove to the nearest tire shop for help. I took out the jack and managed to jack it up and tried to pump it with the Michelin electrical pump. According to some user over the net, the pump could easily filled a flat tire within 3 minutes provided that the car was jacked; 4 minutes past and I could get only 25 PSI instead of 32 ….. And Yun told me that there was a puncture over the tire. I saw a nail protruding from the tire and decide to give up. Ok…I had to switch to plan B -> replace the flat one with the spare tire.

I had never done it by myself although I had a couple experience with my dad. But still I manage to remember some of the details. It took me a good 30 minutes to get the spare tire into the proper position as the spare tire of Fefe is not a shrinkage iron version but a proper rim as other rims were, darn heavy and I had difficulty mounting it onto the car….

I remembered one of the key my dad told me – you need to stand on the L-shape bar to tighten or loosen the wheel lug. I did it in front of Yun and told her that, that was what my dad taught me, it would take a brute force to loosen the lug unless you use you body weight and the gravity.... I told her that she need to remember it by heart and hopefully it would come in handy later in her life….

I drove to a nearby tire shop and got the tire patched in a few minutes.

It was a lucky day and I got the Igloo maxcold 40q as planned; we had a good dinner in one of the restaurant nearby…

Yun had tried to help me lowered the jack after the replacement and she quit after a while as she found that it was so tiring to lowered the jack, nothing much to expect as Yun is a GIRL……. Lot of young chap out there that never saw a spare tire is mounted; they just call the tow car when they encounter it. I hope Yun would remember the steps and keys later in her life just like what I had done….