PEAK HOUR FLAT PART III

Tuesday 28^th August 2012: 4.51pm – Tullamarine Freeway, Bulla Road exit

Have you ever tried to hold a casual conversation with someone, in the middle of the Tullamarine Freeway, during peak hour traffic? 

It’s a challenge to say the least.

However, my new buddy and I managed to chew the fat, at a very loud volume, whilst he changed my tyre like he was working the formula one pits. 

I would have struggled to lift the fucken tyre out of the boot, but he picks it up like it’s a friggin donut, and has the old one off and replaced in like two minutes.

I laugh at my ignorance, thinking he would use the jack that comes with the car.  Of course not: he has one of those groovy hydraulic drill nut changing thingies that undoes the nuts in seconds.

I’m standing there watching his stealth efficiency, and wondering if the friggin wheel will even stay on there!  Five nuts it’s all the fucken thing is hanging on by.  Five nuts are holding up the entire back right section of the car.  How the hell does that work?

Great… now have visions of driving along the Tulla, when my back wheel comes flying off, causing me to career out of control across three lanes of traffic, which causes a major pile up that keeps everyone from getting home for the next three hours.

I’ll be the most hated woman in Victoria.

I shake my head and focus on what my new buddy is saying. 

He’s turning over my flat to see if he can find something in it.  ‘Whatever it is, it’s gone straight through…’ he says, pointing to a hole the width of a cigarette.

‘Holy crap… I’ve never seen that before…’

‘No, that’s unusual.  Straight through.  Normally you can see a nail or a screw in there, but whatever it is went straight in.’

I glance back up the freeway whilst my buddy replaces the flat in the boot, and packs all the useless jack crap back in that’s still all shiny in it’s pristine newness.  I wonder what I ran over… and why did I cop it, and no one else… how interesting…

Then it dawns on me as I stand there watching all of this traffic…. How the fuck am I going to merge back into it?

Tuesday 28^th August 2012: 4.56pm – Tullamarine Freeway, Bulla Road exit

The engines running; she’s in gear, and I sit there looking in the rear view mirror, waiting for a break that just won’t come.

How the fuck am I going to do this?  The emergency lane disappears about two hundred meter’s ahead of me… I’ve really got to force my way out here…

Sometimes, you just need to make things happen.  So I do what any woman in my position would do: I floor it.  Well, as ‘floored’ as you can get in a fucken Hyundai.

Some poor bastard in a 4WD takes pity on me, and let’s me into the stream; thankfully, as I just run out of emergency lane as I merge in front of him.  I give him a wave of thanks (fucken hate it when I don’t get a wave of thanks), and I’m on my way. 

My knight-in-Citylink-uniform’s van vanishes into the distance behind me, and I send him a silence thanks.

My heart has finally started to settle back into something that resembles a relatively normal heartbeat, and I’m on my way again.

I flick through the favourites on my phone, and select one.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi Mum!’

‘Hello love!  What’s going on?’

‘You’ll never guess what’s just happened to me…’