The Flat Tire Sept. 22. 2001 My daughter Jill and I were going to Sacramento, and when we were just a few miles out of Auburn, we heard this weird noise. "what's that noise?" she asked. I said, "Helicopter, and a big one!" we were all looking up to the sky for a helicopter making a big thumping noise, and then Jill turns to me and said, "That's no helicopter, that's a flat tire!" Oh boy, here we are on the side of the freeway with two kids, 18 months and 4 years old. Luckily we had cell phone, unlucky that we had no signal and couldn't call out. We are screwed. She says she has watched her husband change a tire, she could do it. I get out with the kids, holding baby Max and hanging on to little Alix's hand, trying to look helpless and forlorn. Now we are really screwed. ( I look more like a truck driver) Jill takes the tire iron and lays down under the car, as she attempts to beat the bolt off the bottom of something to get the spare tire. That doesn't work, and neither does me looking helpless, the cars are flying past. I told her just wait, a cop will come by and call the 3-A. We wait, as she reads the car manual, finds out you don't get the spare by beating on something under the car. You merely twist something inside the back hatch of the mini van. We get the tire, and now she is attempting jack up the jack, no luck. We are screwed. They baby is tired of me holding him, so he is pinching the skin on the under side if my upper arm. (you know, where the flabby stuff is) He is thinking this is great, Grandma is making more moves than a monkey with 10 feet of rope! Here comes a hiway patrolman..................he keeps right on going, a few minutes later, here comes an Auburn City policeman.............he keeps right on going................ Now I am getting hot, I take the spare tire, and throw it behind the van, just in case they missed the point as to why we are here. Do they think we pull off a freeway to get out of the mini van and have a picnic lunch on the side of the road with two little kids? In the meantime, Jill keeps trying to call her husband, but the signal won't go through. Two placer county Sheriffs go by, do they stop? No they don't. Baby Max is playing, "pull grandma's face off, because she has no hands to stop me". Just as I am thinking for about the 10th time, we are screwed, a young guy about 30 years old, in a white pickup pulls up behind us. He said he saw us here on his way up to Auburn, and we were still here when he came back, so he thought maybe we could use some help. He changed the tire in about 5 minutes and we were on our way to Les Schwabs for tires. In the meantime, Jill's husband kept getting these calls and his caller ID says it's from Jill's phone. He can't hear anything, just a buzzing noise. So he says if you are in trouble call right back. He immediately gets another call, only Jill can't hear him and thinks it's not going through. He jumps in his truck and heads for Sacramento looking for us along the road. The only trouble was, we went the other way. We finally meet up as we were on our way to the tire store. Now we are all in Sacramento, 50 miles of home. Just as we get the tires, it starts to rain, thunder, lightning, the whole nine yards. Thank god, we weren't still standing alongside the road. I think we may invest in some of that spare tire in the can stuff.