No one wakes up in the morning thinking, today is the day I am going to get a flat tire on a Mexican highway, so I’ll just prepare for that. Even my husband, a former military officer who sorts laundry like he’s planning to invade Russia, has not considered this to be a part of the day’s plan. Instead, we have loaded up the car for our annual trek back to Montreal from San Miguel de Allende, and every square inch of our Audi Q5’s trunk has been geometrically optimized (again, by my meticulous husband) to ensure the non plus ultra of space utilization. He knows where everything is, each item lined up as tight as a Von Trapp Family photo, pre-Maria. I wonder why he doesn’t do the same thing for our Tupperware drawer in the kitchen.
Two days earlier he had noticed our front left tire looked a little soft, but we chalked it up to the way it was parked on the uneven cobblestone street outside our house. Besides, our car’s instrument system is so sophisticated that its operating manual has taken down server farms when fed into Chat-GPT, and surely it would tell us if our tire needs air. Instead, when we turn on the ignition, the panel blinks back at us Zen-like, lulling us into a state of driving bliss. It’s 5:30 a.m., and the sun is just rising.
When we tell our friends that we drive to (and from) San Miguel de Allende a couple of times a year, most look at us as though we have just told them that, yes of course we are capable of performing a heart transplant on their only child. In fact it is our only child, a 75 pound lovably deranged Airedale Terrier, that compels us to drive instead of condemning him to a plane’s cargo hold. Tales of South of the Border driving misadventures, the veracity of which we cannot confirm abound, from being stopped by federales to intentional “accidents” to shake down drivers for money while shaking up their nerves. And although we would like to think we are as unperturbed as our car’s instrument panel, our sphincters are about as tight as a drunk at a wedding.
On Highway 57, about three hours into our drive, a polite ding announces a yellow warning light on our panel; the pressure in one of our tires is low. We decide that, instead of panicking about not having seen a gas station in the last hour, this is a sign that one must be coming up soon. A few minutes later we are rewarded for our magical thinking and pull into a station. Sure enough, the front left tire is down a few pounds of pressure, but we fill it back up and tell ourselves there is nothing to worry about. After fifteen minutes of cursing the Audi engineers, I manage to reset the pressure gauge on the panel. I squeeze out a smile.
Back on the road, our false sense of optimism is soon clobbered by another ding. I feel a vacuum where my heart used to be. I try to tell myself I am only imagining that the steering is pulling left. We veer into the next station we see, far from any town. As I approach the pump, the attendant is already standing with air hose in hand. I get out and gaze at the tire, as deflated as my hopes and hissing like a pissed off viper. The attendant shakes his head. It dawns on me that I don’t even know the Spanish word for tire (llanta). Miraculously, right next to the station is a tire shop—a “vulcanizadora”—which looks like a wooden outhouse surrounded by dusty heaps of discarded tires.
The man who greets us there takes a swig from his beer can and grunts as he looks at our tire through glazed and bloodshot eyes, then giggles. “I’m drunk,” he says, then adds that it’s Sunday, as though that explains everything. We make quick work dismantling my husband’s packing Jenga, and rummage for the spare, a “donut” that, once inflated, will only allow us to drive at 50 mph until we can find a proper replacement. Our original tire, we’re told by our drunken expert, is beyond repair, but assures us that our spare will get us to the border, no problem. He and his buddy make quick work changing and rotating our tires, and 150 pesos later we’re on the road.
We have entrusted our route to Waze, which seemingly questions why we are driving half our normal speed, and annoyingly keeps on adding to our arrival time until we wonder if we’ll make Eagle Pass, Texas before nighttime, while the cardinal adage to never drive in an unknown place after dark plays in our heads. Clearly determined to ramp up our already heightened anxiety, Miss Waze detours us onto a deserted secondary road where we dodge bumper busting topes (speed bumps) and bus eating potholes and fear for both our safety and sanity while realizing that the Waze algorithm is likely the cause of more than one failed marriage.
Finally, we reach the border and are greeted by an unusually friendly official who welcomes us home. Tonight, fighting our Airedale for space on our Motel 6 bed, we will soothe ourselves with a bottle of tequila then fall into a gentle sleep, dreaming of first class airline tickets.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
