I’m starting to feel cursed.
It was about 10:00 at night and I was making my way home on the freeway last week. My head was full of board game ideas from the prototype/playtesting event I’d just left, and my tires were full of air. I knew they were full of air because I’d spent 20 minutes driving around downtown looking for a gas station with an air pump after seeing that the right front tire was dangerously low.
“I hope I didn’t overfill the tire,” I thought idly to myself. “I’ve had enough high-speed blow-outs for one lifetime, which I’ve already documented here and here.”
Ten minutes later, I heard an ominous “bang!” from the rear of the van. Two minutes after that, the vehicle started to shudder, and I knew I’d lost a tire. On the freeway. Again.
I pulled over to the shoulder. It wasn’t much of a shoulder. More of shoulder blade. There was exactly enough room for one vehicle to fit between a concrete barrier on the left, and four lanes of high-speed death on the right. I squeezed out the driver-side door and headed to the back to of the van to check my hypothesis.
The good news was that I hadn’t over-filled the front tire. The bad news was that the right rear tire was flat, and trying to change it was out of the question. There was simply no room. Just squatting in front of it in the traditional “Hey, I’m changing a tire here!” position would result in my sudden transformation into roadkill.
It took the tow truck half an hour to arrive. I don’t know if I’ve ever been quite so aware of my own mortality as I was during those 30 minutes. Every few seconds, a car zipped around the corner behind me and shot past with only a few feet to spare. The van rocked, and I had to wonder if the next car would be the one with my name on it.
Needless to say, I survived the ordeal. But after three such incidents, it’s starting to feel personal.
I’m starting to feel cursed.
