flat tires and new tricks...

yesterday, as i was about to drive my car over to shauna's to lend it to her, i discovered that the old element had a flat rear tire...nice..ok, well, no big deal..i phoned her and told her i just had to put the spare on and i'd be right over. now, i've changed a lot of tires so i was quite confident i'd have it done in short order and away i'd go...well...that didn't happen. after i'd taken off the lug nuts and should have just been able to removed the tire, no problema, it refused to budge. it was locked on the axle and wouldn't come off, not, as they say, for love nor money...i called a guy, who was also in the underground working on his car, over to see if he could see anything i was missing in this picture...he pulled as well, so hard in fact, i was scared bit that he may have a brain aneurysm and/or pull the car off the jack...ok..no good..so i consulted the owner's manual...nothing there i hadn't seen before...i then called pacific honda to see if anyone there knew anything that could be helpful..
"hi...i can't seem to get my car wheel off the car to change the tire...do you know of anything? that element tires are somehow different...?"
"um...i'm not a mechanic..."
"i know but you sell them, maybe there's something..."
"maybe you've not taken all the lug nuts out.."
"i have...i've changed a few tires.."
"i don't know...is it crutial?"
"what?"
"that you get the wheel off?"
"well...i'd like to drive my car...if you had a car wouldn't you want to drive it..?"
pause. nothing and then...
"i dunno"
"you don't know if you'd want to drive your car"
"i don't know..."
"what?"
i think then the words, "fuck it" came out of my mouth and i decided that i needed a little breather...i did, for a few minutes, think maybe on these particular wheels/mags, i had to take the centre bolt off but 1: i didn't have a big enough socket 2: thought that that would be pretty fuckin' stupid...
so i went upstairs and waited for 'he who can not be named on the blog' to come over...and searched the net for answers....i had a few thoughts, but nothing concrete...
we both looked on the interweb and he finally found a bunch of posts about this very subject from a variety of car owners...
so we tried one fo the suggestions..and it worked...
turns out that many cars with aluminum rims get very tight and jammed on the axle and have to be worked loose...one suggestion, that we used, was to put the lug nuts back on loosely, drop the car down off the jack, and then either rock the car side to side, or drive it a few feet and it will crack the seal it's made, much like tapping a lid of a jar that won't open...so presto, all good...
let this be a lesson for you to keep in your back pocket...you just never know when you may need this little tid bit.
and so it was today that i went and paid a visit to my pals at kal-tire near the BOC shop in burnaby...and like they've done so many times before, fixed the flat for free and sent me on my way...i like those guys and try and send them business whenever i can...
then it was time to go get mishi and, firstly get some lunch and then head to costco for some warehouse sized goods...

ok...muc's in town so i'm off to have a drink with him later over on commercial drive with a few of the other fellow bombers...

g, xo

on more thing off the list..and as the rules state - if there really are any - i can't share my meal and mishi wanted nachos too so...she had to order some for herself...

check out them colored jeans...whoa...