buy modafinil boots Packing up the truck this morning to head to Virginia, I came out to find the rear tire outrageously flat, which it was not the night before. My first flat – I’ve never even had one on a bicycle before. Of course, changing it ended up being difficult, because the metal frame holding the spare – located in the undercarriage – was rusted stuck, and had to be hacksawed off. This took some time, as it was in a most awkward position. But it got done.
I then took the tire to a Tire Repair shop on Hillside Avenue, where they found two puncture holes, a leaky valve, and a leaky seal. The procedure – squirting dish detergent all over the inflated tire to watch for bubbles – I found moderately ingenious, the kind of thing that is easy to take for granted, but would be very hard to come up with all alone. The Russian guy who owned the shop (and who objected to my Obama shirt: “What is he doing? Talking! And now he’s sending home all the Jihadis, they’re mostly going to Russia!”) said “What did you do to that tire?” to which I had no good response. It was fine the day before driving on Crossbay Boulevard. Patching two holes, pasting the seal, putting on a new valve, putting the tire back on the truck, and inflating all the tires including the spare cost $12.
While I was thus engaged in vehicular maintenance, I decided to fix the left rear blinker, which had not been working for about two weeks, necessitating the use of hand signals for turns, which I’m sure no one understands (or notices). I went to Autozone on Atlantic Avenue, got the proper light bulb (two for $3.69), and returned to the parking lot, which really was a great scene. Everybody in the parking lot – mostly Indians and Guyanese, summer Saturday afternoon in Ozone Park – was making car repairs. The ground was littered with the wrappers of whatever they had just purchased.
I unscrewed the plastic cover on the rear lights, but of course that had no effect on it: it would not budge. Having had enough of this sort of thing, I broke the cover and put the light bulb in. I then walked down the block to the “Convenience Supermarket” on 113th Street and bought a $1.49 roll of clear packing tape (no brand, no packaging, just the tape with MADE IN CHINA stamped all over its inside) and taped the bits of cover back on.
I finally got off Long Island, crossed into Staten Island which looked beautiful, found that Interstate 278 does not intersect with Interstate 78 (of course, why would it?), took 287 to 78 and shot across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. I ate dinner in New Smithville at the diner there, where on the television, tuned in to Fox News, I saw Mike Huckabee playing guitar for a rock band with a lead singer that looked like Jesus. I pulled up later that evening at the Battlefield at Antietam, where I slept under the stars.
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