Tonight I’m off to the USA! Had my Admin Assistant at work book a driver for me as I didn’t want to transfer twice and be on the train for 4 hours tonight. The ride was smooth for the first hour with little to no traffic. Once we got to the far west side of Shanghai, bam! The front passenger tire blew.
Yup, busted flat in Hongqiao.
My poor driver. He seemed to be having a rough day to begin with and this just didn’t help at all.
He got out of the car to inspect what happened then proceeded to change the tire. I helped out by holding the flashlight (how butch!) while he did the work. It’s been quite a number of years since I’ve changed a tire, but you do it once and you’re a pro. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to jack the car up before you start to undo the lugnuts, right? Oh boy, this should be fun!
The driver remembered, fortunately, that the terrible sound of lugnuts being stripped clean was not a good sound and proceeded to jack the car up. Amazement came when the lugnuts were much easier to loosen.
I don’t know if there’s an equivalent to AAA in China, but two service workers did stop by with their flatbed trucks to see if we are ok. That’s nice of them! Probably they were hoping for a wreck to tow and get money since they left pretty quickly after finding things under some semblance of control.
The flat tire was eventually replaced with a full-sized spare *phew!* and we got back on the move after a 25 minute delay. And just one km down the road, traffic, moderate in volume but still annoying. Hopefully it won’t delay things too much.
Moral of this adventure in China holds for any place you are: When traveling for work or pleasure, leave yourself plenty of time to get to your destination as your stress levels will remain low if things go a south.
UPDATE: For those of you worrying at home, I made it to the airport in time and am currently waiting in the immigration line to leave the country for a spell.