Of all my annoying habits, I think my least favorite might be getting flat tires at inopportune times.

In the past 18 months, I’ve gotten flats at 2 a.m. on a Friday, 4 p.m. on a Sunday, and most recently at 2 p.m. on a Saturday. For whatever reason, tire shops in Mississippi tend to have limited hours on the weekend so those are just about the worst times of day to have that little orange dashboard light chirping at you.

The first two times I was fortunate to either get help changing it or limp it to Wal-Mart. Last Saturday, that was not the case. Wal-Mart was backed up and couldn’t get to it for a couple of hours, if they got to it at all. A half-dozen other tire shops in the area were closed.

With no other options, I was forced to go to the dreaded Plan B — get it home before it bleeds out and change it myself.

I was taught the mechanics of changing a tire by my father as a teenager — where to jack up the car, how to loosen and tighten the lugnuts — but in the ensuing 25 years I’d never had to actually do it. I’m not much of a car guy, and I generally like my vehicles to have four air wrench-tightened wheels on them, so I never messed with it. This time, however, there was no other option. There’s a AAA card in my wallet, but the guy who came would have made me turn in my man card when he was done changing the tire if I didn’t at least try.

After reading the owner’s manual and figuring out the mechanics of the jack for about 10 minutes — solving the mysteries of the emergency jack was one of the things that had flummoxed me on previous tire-changing adventures — I was ready to tackle this rite of passage. There was a scary moment when the jack, slightly misaligned under the car, popped into place. Another moment of dread followed when a couple of the lugnuts proved to be a little stubborn.

An hour later, however — half of which was borrowing the wife’s car to go air up the spare tire — the deed was done. The spare was on and I got to cross an item off my bucket list.

Later Sunday afternoon I was watching the NASCAR Cup race. A horde of pit crew members went over the wall on every stop and instinctively changed all four tires in about 15 seconds.
That’s pretty good. I guess. But let’s see them do it with an emergency jack and stubby tire iron.

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Ernest Bowker is the sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com