We’d planned this vacation just after Christmas, as my mom, wife, my cousin, his wife, and I sat in our humble home on the southeast Raleigh. Full off of some delicious eating at Logans, a chain steakhouse, we enjoyed relative warmth inside, and contemplated where outside warmth might be had.

The idea was to take my always-hard-working mom down to the beach, as she doesn’t do a whole lot of traveling. We decided the first weekend of May, this weekend, would be a good one, as it is typically warm but the beach is not yet crowded. My cousin and his wife have a timeshare, so they booked in their property of choice, the Sea Watch Resort. I then booked a room for me and my wife in that same hotel. And I felt happier already, because having this trip to look forward to would make staying on the work grind easier. It’s always better when you feel you’re working toward something, right?

So time passed, and a week or so out my mom said she would be unable to make it due to something having come up. Also we had initially scheduled to remain out there from Thursday to Sunday, but my wife asked that I move our checkout day to Saturday so she could get us back in time to relax a little before returning to her teaching duties. This was all fine and good, and I was just happy we would get to go in some capacity.

well… sort of. Our story begins, inauspiciously, on Wednesday night with a nail. The first thing we needed to do was get the dog to my sister-in-law’s house so she could be looked after. The nice thing about our tiny Pomeranian, and I know I’ve written at least one entry about her but am assuming you won’t feel like trying to find it, is that she is easily taken care of. She only needs food and pee pads and she’s good to go, similar to a cat.

So we made the 30-minute ride across Wake County to drop our furry child off, chattering and feeling increasingly excited about the days of sun-splashed sprawling that awaited. Went inside and chatted, as the dog in residence, a biggermix of Pomeranian and some other breed, greeted our arrival. He’s older, but still hanging in there. Fortunately for us, we’d only stayed inside for about 20 minutes.

as I slid into the front seat and buckled in, my wife said she was hungry and we began the usual dance of trying to figure out where to get dinner. As she started the motor however, we heard the ominous beep that means the car is telling us something. Turns out the PSI in the back right tire was dropping fast. The other three held steady at 37, while that one had already plummeted to 25. Being the glass-half-empty person I am (I know I know, I’m really trying to work on that mentality) I feared the trip was gonna be swallowed before we even hit the highway. And worse, we were already inside of the 24-hours one has prior to arrival that the hotel reservation could be canceled. So I’d also be eating $200+. Great!

Off we went, slowly losing speed along the way as the pressure continued to drop. She swung by her dealership, already closed as it was 6:30. So she plugged in (ha, ha) a query for places to fix tires, and came across a Pep Boys that would stay open till just 8. Happily it was only a little over three miles away, so we practically limped over there as the pressure was down to 21 PSI.

“Can you help,” she asked the woman as we got there.

“We’ll take a look,” she replied (there are four cars ahead of you.”

So I collected my things and followed her inside, where the temperature was set to frigid and the air smelled so heavily of rubber that my head immediately hurt. I tried to read, found it hard to concentrate as we contemplated the possilibity that we’d be parting with a big chunk of change for new tires or significant repairs. 7 became 7:30 became 8:00, and the place emptied out. Finally, mercifully, they got to our ride. As luck would have it, we were the last customers to be seen, well after 8 as we had arrived early enough. They told us, a little before 9, that she had inded run over a rogue nail and the tire only required a patch. $25 and lot of relief, and we were good to go again! And with that, your friendly neighborhood pesimist learned a lesson again in how things can indeed work out in the end. More, hopefully, on the actual trip tomorrow. Or Monday? Sometime within the week!