Good fortune had us right in front of Exit 3.  I pulled onto the left shoulder of the ramp, where we had ample space.  We got out and looked at the offending wheel, which was still hissing at us.  The valve stem had decided to give up the ghost and no longer hold all this hot air.

I had not yet had a flat with BB2.  With my previous F-350, I had practiced dropping the spare to check its pressure – in our driveway.  But four years into ownership of BB2 and the thought had never occurred to me to do a dry run – unusual for me, because I love doing test runs.

To make matters more interesting, the rims on BB2 have a long lug nut, requiring a special socket, which Larry had wisely made sure I’d gotten and kept in the truck.  He had also thought ahead and had me get a set of regular lug nuts in the off chance the spare had to be put on, as the long lugs would not work on the spare.  Ah, wise man, thinking ahead, my husband.

But the shop that had rotated my tires several weeks earlier had gotten too happy with the impact wrench, and Larry could not break the lug nuts.  So I put in a call to every woman’s roadside hero, Triple A.  After a painful tour of their queue, I finally got a live person and put in my request for assistance.  It would take them just over an hour to get to us.

Meanwhile, Larry, never one to quit easily or readily, managed to break one of the nuts.  Then another and another.  My concern was that he didn’t break one of HIS nuts, as it took a great deal of human torque to get the job done.  Meanwhile, I gleefully put out the orange reflector triangles I’d been toting around in the backseat for just such an event.  I got out the neatly packaged rods to assemble to get the spare tire down.  I looked for the hole in the back bumper to insert the rod to hopefully hook into the mechanism that would allow the spare tire to drop down.

But unlike BB1, BB2 had a lock on the hole – a mechanical chastity belt, if you will.  Well, I hadn’t thought of that, nor even noticed it.  I didn’t recall getting a separate key for that, as I had for the bed liner latches which I promptly forgot about until the body shop needed it and I had no idea where the key was.  Fortunately, after discovering the bed liner key was not the right match, I found out that the ignition key was.  I popped the latch out, inserted the long configuration of rods, made immediate connection with the mechanism, and effortlessly dropped the spare.

Larry had broken all the lug nuts and a significant sweat as well.  Heat waves fluttered up off the concrete.  Next – the jack.  Um, where was it?  One came with the truck, didn’t it?  We had to get out the owners manual to find out exactly where it was tucked in in the backseat, but we found it and wrestled it out of its nesting place.  Parking brake on, jack in place, Larry raised the truck up, wrestled the heavy tire off, wrangled the spare on, and secured the dusty and unglamorous spare.  Hallelulah!!  Threw all the pieces-parts in the back of the truck, heave-hoed the offending tire into the bed, cancelled Triple A, and off we went.  We decided to take Route 11 all the way home in case something cattywhumpus happened.

We were several miles north of Picayune, back to American Top 40, basking in the beautiful day, congratulating ourselves on a job well done.  Then Larry started playing with the gutter pieces again.  I heard grumbling, then cursing, then silence.  I looked over at him as he stared out the windshield with the parts in his lap.  “I don’t have enough parts,” he muttered.  “I need ten more of these and not the right one of this.”

I simply said, “So are we going back to Slidell?”

“Yes,” he said.  “And let’s hope we don’t get another flat, because we’re out of spares.”