#punchedwheel

[anton-chekhlenkov]

I’ve known how to say “wheel” in English for a long time, but I still can’t pronounce this word properly. Pity that "spare wheel" is not included at all in the basic vocabulary of the traveler.

I guess that any adequate person (if such people leave for a month and a half to travel abroad by car and even dare to take a six-month-old baby on board) would look in advance what to say and what to do in case of a car breakdown. It turns out that I'm a fan of improvising and solving issues on the run. In a way one can call it laziness. In fact... well, one will be right. If consider any advantages in this case, well, traveling brings much more fun and there is a lot to remember. There are so many stories to tell that you can even write a blog. Oh, yeah, hmmm...

So, after a several-day stop in the cute Czech town of Kutná Hora, we filled the trunk of our Kia Rio to the brim and set off along the route. We didn’t run out of time, but still it was better not to linger - the next host was already booked. Late arrivals are not favored in Europe, hotel service gets rather worried if you lag behind schedule. In just one hour they can make several calls and appear rather agitated, speaking in an incomprehensible local dialect. While I was managing how to taxi along narrow one-sided streets from another Czech town, where we’d had a stop to see a castle suddenly discovered on the map, I caught a strange noise, that one of the wheels: it differed from the usual rustling on the paving stones ... I stopped to check and saw that the tire was broken.

It was drizzling and at the same time not nasty (vacation syndrome?). Baby was sleeping in the car. Ann and I were laying out all our things right on the ground and the curb - a spare wheel, as expected, was at the very bottom of the trunk. The next stop, far enough to find a service and deal with the problem, was planned only in Italy. How much time would we need? Where could a long-spare-wheel-ride lead to? I didn’t know answers to those questions then – it was my first experience of a flat tire. Therefore, I tried to drive carefully and slowly. After traveling for a distance over 700 km and limping on all four wheels we entered the country of temperamental characters.  Later it turned out that the wheels wobbled side to side and they all had to be changed. As I’ve already written, I like to get my fair share of mistakes. We’d planned to use these tires for the last season, so we weren’t very upset.

After setting up at a campsite near Venice, we took rest from frequent interim relocations just for the first two days. We roamed around the islands until we got blisters on our feet and returned only by night, filled with the romance of evening street concerts on floating motor stages.

“The flat tire lies in the place of the spare wheel. If we plan to fix it, the trunk will have to be completely unloaded. In case we change the tire, would it be worth replacing both on the axis then? Then we should put the new tires on the drive axle, and the old ones back.  There is no need to remove the spare wheel from the disk, just to check the balancing and shift it to its place in the trunk, which still needs to be unloaded. It’s also necessary to find out why the car vibrates from side to side, which happens only at a speed above 60km per hour…". This way I would easily explain the master the core of the problem if we were in Russia.

The understanding of the fact that all described above should be conveyed in a foreign language drove me into a grinding halt.

Well, one can draw a wheel, show it with their finger, then pick up the familiar pronunciation variation and operate it. Flat tire is more difficult to depict: you’ll need to upload personal things to the employees’ workspace for about 15 minutes (be ready to face the puzzled looks) in order to visualize the problem.  So, I took a deep breath when approaching the tire service, that I’d noticed on our entering the surroundings of Venice – we would figure it out, I used to get out of such mess... I exhale and enter the building with my head held high.   I cheerfully approached some kind of the reception desk and granted a polished "Do You Speak English?" with a smile. Expecting the predictable “Yessss” in response, I was thinking of gestures I could use to start the terrible performance of playing Charades with comments in broken English.

But... in fact, it was an expression of deep bewilderment of my interlocutor that I observed. Then I caught a series of unfamiliar sounds coming from him, but couldn’t make out anything. It was a failure. An unsuccessful attempt of using general words like “car”, “breaking”, “fix” made me understand that playing Charades wouldn’t work -- I just couldn’t catch whether the person understood what I was showing him or not. I was sure that everyone had to know the word “Car” at least, especially in the car service in town so popular among tourists! As It turned out – no one had to. Even something similar to “No” never slipped in response. It was a total failure. Losing hope and words, I pointed my finger on the tire next to the window, while trying to gather my thoughts. Some elusive sounds came again in response, but I guessed by the intonation that it was a question.

I’d got no choice… but my wife and baby on my conscience. Camping was paid for one more day. We had to go further the following day, otherwise we wouldn’t reach the desired destination and have time enough to come back. It was necessary to return to Russia before the insurance expired.

So, I just waved my hand pointing to the exit -- it was clear without words: “let’s go.”. The guy from the service was following me right to the car while I had no idea or plan for further action. I doubted that the subject of the dialogue that was just in front of us would be of great help - I wouldn’t get any feedback from our conversation. We went out into the street and all of a sudden, I heard a familiar voice somewhere behind my back: it was the master looking right at the car number and exclaiming an unexpected but so dear “'Aaaah, sh*t! Why not in Russian from the beginning!”

That’s how two fools of South Russian origin found each other in a foreign country. The following day, my family and I were finally heading along the highway on four brand-new tires made in Poland towards the city of all roads –  Rome.

P.S. Well, based on the pros’ recommendations in such matters and in order to somehow link this funny story to the topic of the blog, I will highlight my long-standing friendly relations with the laziness mentioned above (and how it can help in life) in one of the upcoming Tuesday publications.

Translated by Irina Zaitseva