Beauty Morning, Eh Mate?

(You have to channel your inner Crocodile Dundee to read that properly)

Well, it started out a beauty morning, anyhow. Sunny, clear skies, spotted an eagle less than 10 minutes into my commute, stopped to shoot a couple of shots of the scenic vistas for posting later, traffic was light and speedy ... everything was going wonderfully.

Until I heard an ominous "fwap, fwap, fwap" coming from the vicinity of my front right tire. Being a Thoroughly Modern Woman and all, I very calmly and cool-ly pulled my car off the road, unloaded the spare, the jack and the tire iron and set to work. All went well until I got all the nuts off and tried to remove the tire. No luck - I couldn't get the thrice-damned thing to budge a millimeter. Try jacking the car a little higher, tried applying a little pressure with the tire iron, to no avail. And I didn't want to take a chance on severing a brake line or something. So I lowered the car, flat tire still in place, threw everything into the back, locked it up and started walking.

Fortunately for me, all this happened about 2 blocks from the office. Considering that my trip to work covers 55 km, most of it either on deserted country backroads with no shoulder or heavily trafficked highway laden with large, speeding semis, it could have been much, much, much worse. Especially since I couldn't get the tire changed.

Still, not the greatest possible start to the morning.