Published 2025-06-18
tag(s): #random-thoughts #failures
We are in the middle of a move to another town (the why is long story, and something I want to write about at some point), and of course because this would be the worst time for it to happen, I got a flat tire.
I was driving back from the new place, after unloading some boxes, late at night. It had been
raining all day, and I was waiting at an intersection with the longest red light known to
humanity. Suddenly a beep in the dashboard, I look down and one tire was at 25 psi instead of
35. I had lots of time to ponder on trying to find a place open at 11pm, or to go to a gas
station to pump some air and see how long it would hold, or just go home.
While thinking about these options, the tire went down to 22 psi, and I figured I had a really
bad puncture, or a faulty sensor.
Obviously, it was a bad puncture. 🙃
This made me really worried, thinking of the move, and taking days off for it, and trying to
make the best use of the time, and what if we can't fix the tire and I have to buy a new one
"now of all times", and I can't even move the car with the tire so flat....
I went to bed and woke up in a very anxious mood.
Next morning, on the way to Juan's school I stopped by this little independent shop, with a
picture of the piece of metal stuck in the tire. They said it was patchable, so I went back
home, used the emergency pump to inflate the tire enough to roll a few blocks. It was a 7
minute drive and I lost like 10 psi getting there. 😬
I've been to car dealerships, Les Schawb, Costco tire, and an independent shop in Littleton. And they all looked neat and tidy, there was someone handling people coming in, and the mechanics working in the back, small waiting rooms.
I walked in, two guys were having breakfast sandwiches, standing next to little table covered
in beaten tools. The shop had an open air section, with piles and piles of tires of all sizes.
A few rims in slightly neater piles. All walls painted grey. A couple greasy rags here and
there.
They were wearing street clothes: no name tag shirts, or same colored pants, or anything like
that. Just regular "work clothes", like when you wear an older tshirt to fix stuff around your
house.
They were speaking Spanish, they said morning how can I help in English, I replied in Spanish,
and that was it.
When I went back with the car, they were having coffee and one of them was smoking. He
extinguished the cigarette on a column, and walked to the car to start working on it.
While they patched the tire, the three of us were chatting about the disgrace it is that many
cars nowadays don't come with a spare, the possible mods for the car, how was it that I got
this puncture, the size of the hole...and then they were done.
As I was driving back home, I was in a great mood.
First of all, the puncture was bad but I could get to the shop on my own. Then, the tire was
fixed, no need to replace it. And finally, it didn't take a long time and I could get back to
focusing on the move.
But that wasn't all of it, I realized.
The whole thing, the shop's look and feel, the way they worked...it was a callback to the tire
shops I used to ride by with my bike on the way to the office in Buenos Aires, in the
Constitución area. Minus the NSFW calendars and posters. A couple times I got flats in my bike
fixed on those shops.
The conversation, about everything and nothing at the same time, was so Latin America too. We
complained, we laughed, we stated facts. As if it wasn't the first (and probably last) time we
were chatting.
It was just what I needed to reset. After such a long time in the US, there are still things
that feel like a callback to "home", and give me a little jolt of joy.
This is so context dependent. Home usually refers to the US, although sometimes it still means Argentina, even 10+ years later of living here.
And when talking about the US, there's a "home" that refers to Littleton, Colorado. Even
though we left over a year ago.
In part because New Jersey hasn't been very welcoming to us, in part because we have a few
friends that are like family over there. We didn't think we were that rooted in Colorado...
until we left.[1]
I wrote before, about how simple words are hard to define. "Home" is even more charged, with meaning and feelings.