Of Flat Tires And The Olympics

Good Lord, I think I’m going to be scared wherever I drive from here on out.

Today I found an exacto knife blade in my left rear tire, nestled perfectly between the treads. Cool, I thought, since I changed my right rear tire two weeks ago after a similar incident, this should be a breeze, right?

Well, let’s take into consideration three things here: I was in Ash Grove on my way home from a shoot, it was raining, and my tire didn’t want to come off after I wrenched off the lug nuts. I had to kick the thing twelve bloody times before it came off.

I put on my spare, drove to Springfield, and the good folks at the Firestone center on Sunshine and Kansas hooked me up by patching up the tire. They said the knife blade gashed it in not one, but two places.

While stewing over my second bad break in as many weeks, I was so thankful that my entire tire (like that?) didn’t need replacing — and that saved me a hundred bucks. I’m so happy about that.

When I came home, I was soaked to the bone, I had to throw away a shirt but I made it okay.

Changing gears now, and I’m not advertising one bit, but you have to watch the Olympics on nbcolympics.com. Seriously, ditch your TV and watch some cool stuff. There are no announcers as it is simply the AV feed coming in from the nerve center in Beijing, but what you don’t get with the commentary, it more than makes up for in the choices of what you can watch.

I’m choosing to watch some of the lesser-televised events in the Games this year — right now it’s badminton, and this is no joke. My brother and I used to play badminton in our yard back in Oregon all the time and it pales in comparison to this.

I can’t wait for table tennis.

Oh and by the way, congratulations to two native Oregonians for taking gold and bronze in the women’s fencing this morning — Mariel Zagunis and Rebecca Ward. They’re from Beaverton and they train there at the Oregon Fencing Alliance. Go Oregon! (In case you’re wondering, another American took silver, so they swept the medals.)