My Life and Karate, Day Twenty

My dojo, Sun Dragon Martial Arts and Self Defense, is running its major yearly fundraiser. We're a nonprofit martial arts studio, which is something of a rare beast, and we raise money every year for our scholarship fund and the free self-defense classes we offer in the community. For my part, every day until the day of the Kickathon, I will write a random amusing anecdote about karate and self-defense - enjoy!

This is completely unrelated except in that it involved a bunch of people from karate, but it's too good a story not to tell.

KJ, Laura and I went to the Texas Renaissance Festival this weekend. We were meeting a bunch of other folks there the next morning, but Laura really REALLY likes to camp, so we packed up and shipped out after work on Friday. Laura's station wagon was pretty jam-packed, and I was pretty tightly wedged in to the back seat, but it wasn't unbearable and we didn't have to leave anything critical behind.

The festival is about two and a half hours away. About an hour in, Laura began muttering about how it really wasn't that windy, but none of us thought anything of it. Half an hour later, she said she thought something was funny - maybe a tire was flat?

"No, if a tire was flat you'd totally feel it," I said.

"We can stop at the next gas station," said KJ. The next gas station was probably fifteen minutes away.

"Ok," says Laura.

*pause*

BANG!

"Ok, NOW the tire's flat."

Laura steered the shuddering wagon onto the shoulder, and we got out. The right rear tire was shredded. It was chilly and very dark, but, conveniently, we had a lovely electric lantern handy. We unloaded the back of the wagon and, working together, got the spare on in record time.

We wedged the flat tire back in the well, but it was too big to fit neatly. This wouldn't have been a problem except that we needed every cubic inch of space. I ended up in the back seat with a plastic tub on my lap big enough that I couldn't see over it. It was very isolating, and I spent the next fifteen minutes praying that we wouldn't get rear-ended, or I'd be be squashed like a bug.

The guys at the nearest Wal-Mart weren't much help. They gave us vague directions to "that guy who does tires" and, as it was nine o'clock on a Friday, we decided to just put some more air in the donut and deal with it in the morning. None of us felt terribly secure on the teeny, cute little spare tire with the car as loaded down as it was, but there weren't very many options in the middle of nowhere, East Texas, at that hour.

The next morning, Laura and I hopped in the car - KJ stayed behind to wash the breakfast dishes - and set out in search of someone who could sell us a tire. The directions we'd gotten the previous night pointed to a location at least half an hour away, and we had no way of knowing if the place was open - or even if it really existed.

As we were coming up to 105, I suggested we pull into the Shell and ask. We turned into their parking lot, and, as we turned, we spotted a sight across the street - "Tire and Tractor". It was a very small building with two garage doors and a couple piles of sagging tires out front. It wouldn't have been very promising, but we were fairly desperate - and the doors were open. Laura swung the car around and we pulled in.

There were two guys inside looking bored, and they were more than happy to make fun of our shredded tire and replace it with another one that wasn't new but was more or less the right size, and we were thrilled. We were back at the faire no more than half an hour after we'd left, and the tire held all the way home.

Sun Dragon is home to one of the most consistently awesome groups of people I've ever encountered. Please support the awesomeness by donating $5 to our fundraiser!