A Flat Tire and Hummus

This bulletin is like one of those TV shows that flashes a message on the screen that reads “Earlier in the Week”. If you miss the message you are confused for the next 30 minutes.

We are flashing back to last Saturday night. Saturday was the day the head musher was supposed to run in the St. Pamphile race but instead ended up in the Montmagny Emergency Room having her thumb stitched while I was in the lobby trying, unsuccessfully, to remember my mother-in-law’s maiden name. Saturday was the day we drove out to the 50-mile checkpoint at a place called Lac Frontiere which loosely translated into English means “Not a great place to get a flat tire”.

Well, luckily, we didn’t get a flat tire at Lac Frontiere. Luckily, we didn’t get a flat tire on the road to or from Lac Frontiere. You remember what that road looked like?

St. Pamphile is about 20 miles over that last hill. Do you see any cars on the road? Do you see any signs of human life? The only recognizable building you’ll see is the occasional Catholic Church where people go to pray that they won’t get a flat tire on the road to Lac Frontiere.

So we made it all the way back to St. Pamphile without incident. We were both tired and hungry. Now we could have decided to go back to the motel and eat in the convenient restaurant. Instead, we chose to drive to Rejean’s Pizza House a mile or two down the road.

The pizza was great but as we approached the car in the parking lot, I heard the Head Musher utter her second alarming sentence of the day. You remember the first was “I’ve cut my hand and I think I might pass out!” Well the second was “Oh no, we’ve got a flat tire!” Luckily flat tires do not make her pass out, or we’d still be there.

I thought to myself “Two people cannot be that unlucky in one day!”

Sure enough, the tire was pancake flat. The early morning loss of blood had not affected the Head Mushers ability to recognize a flat tire.

I immediately got my $19 tire pump out of the car, plugged it into the cigarette lighter and began to attempt resuscitation That pump has saved our necks on numerous occasions. The best $19 I’ve ever spent.

At first it looked as though the tire would remain flat but then, miracle of miracles it started to inflate. I got ten pounds of air in the tire. It needed 35. But at least the tire was no longer resting on the rim.

About this time the head Musher spotted a gas station diagonally across the road and launched herself in that direction in the hopes of securing help. The problem is the gas station looked like one of those places that is heavy on assorted snacks and light on mechanical expertise. I could see the Head Musher’s silhouette in the lobby of the station and she was gesticulating madly. That is usually a good sign. If her arms aren’t moving, she’s not talking. If she’s speaking French, they move twice as fast and in larger circles much like Leonard Bernstein’s when the orchestra is racing him to the finish of Beethoven’s 5th.

I’m secretly lamenting the fact that I can’t hear the conversation. The French word for tire is “pneu” and that is my all-time favorite French word because the “p” isn’t silent. There have got to be “pneus” flying left and right in that gas station and I’m not close enough to hear even one! My third bad break of the day!

She returns with bad news. It’s Saturday night and all the garages are closed. By all, I mean the one. Meanwhile, my ace $19 pump can’t get the tire past 10 pounds and I’m beginning to have visions of abandoning the car and walking six dogs two miles back to the motel.

We decide that the Head Musher will return to the gas station and see if they sell those canisters that seal tire leaks in the hope that we can get enough air in the tire to get back to the motel.

Now I’m back watching the Head Musher running through Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony for the clerk in the gas station. She returns empty handed but says that a lady in the gas station called a friend who moonlights fixing flat tires and he is speeding to our rescue. Can this be true, or did some miscommunication occur between the first and second movements of the Jupiter Symphony?

Five minutes later a guy zooms up in his pickup truck armed with a jack and a Golden Retriever. He jacks up the car and removes the tire. He rolls the tire around looking for a nail and doesn’t find anything. Then he pauses and spits on the tire. The spit begins to bubble. He has found a puncture about the size of a pin-head between the treads of a studded snow pneu. (I like to use that word whenever possible) He smiles broadly, throws the pneu in the back of his pickup, says he’ll be right back and zooms off. I can’t even remember whether he spoke English or French. In fifteen minutes he’s back and the pneu is fixed.

It’s good to pause every once in a while and think about how lucky you are and how many good, helpful people there are in the world. It was unlucky to have had a flat tire, but lucky to have had it in the restaurant parking lot and not out on the road to Lac Boondocks. It was nice that a lady in a garage took the time to call a friend to seek help for a stranger. And it was nice that a guy came out on a cold and miserable night when he could’ve stayed in a nice warm house and not worried about a couple of strangers. And it was an added benefit that he did it with such expertise and good humor. Of course he had his Golden Retriever with him in the back of the truck, so that explains a lot about a person.

So that’s the flat tire story.

Now spring ahead in time to yesterday. I see the Head Musher off on a 15 mile run and I’m tasked with going to the local IGA supermarket to restock her hummus supply.

Does everybody know what hummus is? It’s beige stuff that looks like plastic explosive and comes in a container about the size of a clay pigeon. You start off by eating it on chips when good stuff like onion dip or clam dip is unavailable. Then, apparently, you get hooked on it and the only way you can get off it is by spending a week or two at the Betty Ford Clinic. The Head Musher is hooked on this stuff big time. I stay away from it.

As I’m walking into the IGA, I realize that I don’t know the word for hummus in French. I figure if push comes to shove I’ll just ask for “Explosif plastique” in the dairy section and that ought to get me what I want.

So I approach the first knowledgeable-looking IGA employee I see and ask him where I might find “hummus”. The look on his face is not encouraging. Either hummus is not a recognizable French word or he doesn’t have a clue what hummus is. His brow is deeply furrowed and he’s shaking his head from side to side. So I say “It comes in a container about this big and looks like plastic explosive.” This doesn’t work.

The guy then does something that is completely inexplicable. He turns to a guy behind the meat counter and says “Ou est le hummus?” This guy behind the meat counter looks like he just butchered a five hundred pound cow and didn’t need a meat cleaver. He is wearing a little, round, white hat that is cocked at a rakish angle. He stops dead in his tracks and scrunches up his entire face and says: “Hummmmmmusssssss? Huuuuuuuuuumuuuuuuumsssss? He’s trying to get a linguistic grip on this word and not succeeding. So he reloads and says: “Huuuuummmmmmmmu?” figuring that maybe the “s” on the end of the word is silent. This doesn’t work either and finally he just says “Non!”

Luckily, a well-dressed, middle aged lady standing next to the IGA guy is monitoring our conversation. She has the demeanor of a hummus addict. She pipes up and says in heavily accented English: “I weeel show yu where it is zee hummus. Come weet meee.”

And that’s how I found a 255g package of “Humm! Hummus Cocktail” manufactured by “Fontaine Sante” (there’s an accent aigue over that final “e”) which must be a cover company for a Canadian explosives manufacturer. Oh, by the way, this hummus is laced with roasted artichoke and spinach to improve its addictive qualities.

So now you are caught up on what’s been going on north of the border. The big race is a week from today.

Later,
The One-man Pit Crew

P.S. Thermometer says it is one degree Fahrenheit. “What a day for a mow!” (for you “My Blue Heaven” fans)

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Mushing in Ocean City MD