Changing a tire

Apparently, Hyundai has its own idea of what "changing a tire" means.

 This evening, a friend of mine called and asked if we knew how to change a tire. Since I do and my husband does not, he deployed me to go meet the friend in a parking lot to help her change her tire. I smiled and whistled the whole way there, pleased that I could share my worldly expertise with someone and look like a hero, swooping in to save the day! I imagined explaining all the steps as I performed them and thoroughly impressing the friend and anyone else who may have happened to see what was happening.

When I got there, I dramatically swept out of my pickup truck, announced my arrival, and proudly went to the trunk of the friend's car to haul out the spare tire. I lifted up the little rug in the trunk, and all my pride melted away. There was no spare tire. There was a well for the tire, but it was filled in with some kind of styrofoam, vaguely-tire-shaped container with some weird-looking tools that were unquestionably not a car jack or a lug nut wrench.

The friend called the company from whom she had bought the car, and they too-politely informed her that new cars apparently don't come with spare tires anymore. You have to specifically request one when you purchase your car, and it costs extra. Instead of the tools to replace her tire, they informed her, she had been graced with the tools to repair the tire! How exciting for us! Unfortunately, she had to call a different number for roadside service and spend at least an hour on hold before anyone would be available to even listen to her tale of woe, much less begin taking steps to remedy her problem.

So we cracked open the user's manual and pulled out the tire-repair kit and set to work trying to patch a hole that both of us could have simultaneously stuck our thumbs through if we had felt the urge. For some reason, part of the directions involved her driving around on the flat tire for two miles before we tried pumping it up. Naturally, our efforts were in vain, since the hole was too big to patch.

In the end, I tailed her as we drove carefully to the nearest tire repair shop, which was, ironically, another two miles away. The gentleman behind the counter informed us that not only was it unfortunate, but unsurprising, that the car had come without a spare tire, but the remaining three tires were of poor quality and weren't holding their tread very well at all.

The moral of the story is: when you buy a new car, make sure that it comes with an actual spare tire so that when you get a flat tire, you can fix it and be on your way in about ten minutes, rather than spending two hours fiddling around only to conclude that you have to drive on the rim anyway.