017 – Car Trouble

It rained a bit yesterday (Monday) afternoon. In Nairobi, that normally translates to heavy traffic. I therefore decided to hang around in the office after working hours to let the traffic ease, before making my way home. One of my workmates was also around, and I heard him say he was waiting for my boss, who had left, to come back. This was fortunate for me because it meant the office was not going to be locked as early as it sometimes is. After a while, I finally left. Approaching the car, I noticed that the front left wheel was about half-deflated (or half inflated if you are the optimistic kind). This was the same wheel about which I had remarked to my wife on Saturday, saying that I hoped it did not have a slow puncture. This was after I had noticed that it was looking a bit deflated. We had inflated it that Saturday.

Sadly for me, the car’s jack got damaged a few months ago and I had not gotten round to replacing it, despite having gotten a puncture recently, and having had to borrow a jack from a friend. So here I was, with a deflated wheel and no jack to change it. The supermarket sharing the building with our office did not have any, and even if they would have been having, I did not have the money on me to pay for it.

Happily, my boss arrived after a few minutes and he, unlike me, had a jack in his car. I set it up and lifted the car. He came to check on my progress. The jack bent to one side and the car leaned forward! We lowered the car. The jack looked straight again. He suggested we try to place the jack on a flatter surface. We did. we successfully replaced the wheel. I thanked my boss and I went to wash my hands. As I was driving off, I thought the sound from the wheel was a bit odd. Then I remembered I had not tightened the nuts of the wheel.
And the journey home still had lots of traffic.