Tires - October 3 - 10, 2010

What do you think about when you think of tires?  For me, I think back to the days of the Oregon Trail, when wheeled wagons sunk trenches into the dirt, making the road eventually impassable.  There was no tread on the old-fashioned wheel, just a nice, big circular piece of wood, one on either side of an axle.  Now, with modern cars, we’ve felt the need to upgrade from those huge, outside-the-chassis wheels that were eventually circumferentially wrapped in a rubber tube.  Sure, this gives us more tread, and takes stress off the wheelbase, giving a new longevity to surface transport via motorized vehicles.

However, my last week has been consumed by the failings of this modern-era invention, which has, by all my estimates—and despite the common Bridgestone, Goodyear and once Firestone ads that plague our television airwaves-turned-cable over the last few decades—failed to advance technologically.  Sorry, I know that was a long sentence.  Anyway, last Sunday, a week from today, we descended from the Nam Ngum Reservoir, and, hearing a loud clanking we pulled off the side of the road, just below the dam, opposite families of happy picnickers.  I stepped out my door, walked around the car and found, to no surprise, a dead-flat tire.  We pulled the spare out of the trunk, jacked the car, and replaced the flat.  This thing was blown, and our offroading (in the ten year-old, hatchback Mazda) had ripped the wheel right through the tire—completely shot.  Tu Hkawng had to jump up and down on the wrench to loosen the bolts, but finally we had the car settled back on all-fours.  Except the spare was half-flat, so we slowly rolled along, asked a bike-borne ice cream salesman for directions to the nearest mechanic, and rolled along some more in the direction he’d pointed.  Pointing was essentially as much as he’d done, aside given some arbitrary unit of distance relative to a few obscure landmarks—this is about all we’ve come to expect when asking for directions here. We found some air about sawng lak (2 km) down the road at a shop.

I took some adorable pictures of this little kid with a big head and a bag of junk food.  That stop also marked an important turning point in my journey here, as I learned how to say, ‘tai houp dai baw?’ Is it ok to take a picture?  I’ve found that this isn’t always especially clear, because there is no subject in the sentence, so some people understand the assumption that I am asking for their permission to photograph them, and others—maybe more self-conscious—think I’m interested in their shops, houses, or in a rather common case, their screaming and shouting, leashed pet monkeys.

This reminds me of the news I have heard recently of Johnny Depp—in an effort to publicize the next Pirates movie he showed up at a school, after Cap’n Jack Sparrow was solicited by a young girl in a gang of budding pirates in a British school.  The only thing I can think, is with the relatively recent upsurge in dangerous pirating activities in and outside of Somalia especially, why it is ok to support young schoolchildren who want to be pirates.  Imagination, in this case, should be nipped in the bud.  I solicit argument on this case, so please email me at alexanderkrengel@gmail.com if you happen to disagree.  Pirating is NOT ok.  Nor does it have anything to do with tires, so I digress.  By the way, how does a pirate seal a hole in his pirate ship? T’Arrrrrrgh!  Maybe they do relate; the jury’s out.

This was a week of waxing disappointments.  We started the week eager to find work, anything really.  We journeyed to COPE, a group that is part of the Lao National Rehabilitation Center, and when I say journey I mean that more metaphorically than physically, its only about 5 minutes away by car.  COPE stands for cooperative orthotics prosthetics enterprise, not grammatically or poetically pleasing, but a terrific organization nonetheless. They were established to aid the ailing amputees and otherwise disabled people from Laos.  Many of these are in great part due to UXO (unexploded ordinance) in more remote areas of the country.  Aside from the clinic and visitor center here in the capital, Vientiane, there are two other clinics in other parts of the country.  We toured around the visitor center, guided by Jack, a very friendly, and well-speaking, young, multilingual Lao man.  Then we spoke to Brendon, a newcomer who for three weeks has been the director of the visitor center.  We offered our services and sent in our CVs.  We at first were excited by the seemingly promising opportunity of volunteer work at COPE.  That was until two days later, when our emails were returned.  The removed diction and almost bureaucratic syntax that followed stood in stark contrast to the conversations we’d had on Monday.  This was the first disappointment of our trip.  Nonetheless, we were offered the opportunity to help at their concert next weekend, an effort to raise money for the disabled.  We will hand out flyers on Friday and help staff the concert with our incapable tongues.  Check out http://www.copelaos.org/

So, to get back to tires… Blogging is tiresome, and I’m not quite getting the gist of it quite yet.  Clearly my posts are too long, while Sophia seems to think that blogging is the same as tweeting.  Seriously, check out her blog.  In all honesty though, I wish I did it with more frequency and brevity, instead, both my and you are left with these long descriptions of my boring life.

The week went on rather unsurprisingly, one hot day followed by one even hotter.  Now its Sunday and I swear to god, sitting underneath the windows against the river, even at 5 o’clock my back sweats the 30+ degree heat compounded by dense water vapor.

Yesterday, we probably made the biggest success thus far, in our quarter here in the PDR of Lao.  A Vietnamese family with a big lot off the side of the road near some of the converted and developed wetlands (bad) sold us bikes.  I regret to inform you that we really don’t have any sweet biking pics yet, but we will soon, and you can check them out.  In case you’re curious as to who’s bike is cooler, the answer is clearly mine.  Sophia defaulted herself out of the competition when she refused to buy the bike formerly known as “Taco.”  It’s still called that, and wears its name proudly adorned across the top bar.  And it’s still looking for an owner.  Anyways, we tried bartering, but our white faces automatically increased the price two fold, and eventually we got both bikes for a little over $200.  I’m convinced we were ripped off, but they ride great and have the immense intangible value of freedom and transportation.  Which, for the next two months is probably of great value.  I will no longer feel anchored in the house, dreading the chore of hailing a tuk tuk, and bargaining to get a still-overpriced ride into town.  I mean, it’s not like we can just walk away shaking our heads, hoping for a deal to pop out the driver’s ass.  We walk away and then we wait ten more minutes for the next driver to refuse us service because he doesn’t have any more clearance on his back tires, and the next to give us the same price.  We usually pay about 15 to 20 thousand kip for a ride in or out, which is more than it supposedly costs for locals.  But still, for a 2+ mile taxi, $2.50 on average ain’t a dealbreaker in the slightest.

We test-rode our bikes before paying, and then endured a fifteen minute argument with the owners, who claimed someone would have to stay here while we went to get money.  Despite Jacqui clearly telling them 5 times that we weren’t taking the bikes with us.  We returned an hour or two later and paid, then rode them 100 meters before my front tire was flat and we were still blocks from our lunch restaurant, where we were supposed to meet Jacqui, who was driving.  When I took mine back to get a new tire, which I had no intention of paying for, the kid doing most of the work pulled a spine out of my front tire, claiming that it was the reason it was flat; blaming me.  Except for when we’d bought them the tire was already flat, and he had lied to us, saying he’d already switched the tubes and just hadn’t inflated it.  Makes no sense.  I refuse to be swindled.  You know how I feel about pirates.  So, after about three hours of dealing with my bike tire, I finally had a functional bike.  This is all to say, that wasn’t the first tire problem we’d dealt with yesterday.

The morning began around 11:30, when we left with Jacqui—two goals to accomplish.  First off, her replacement tire—the one she’d gotten put on to replace the spare from last weekend’s incident—had gone, and I repeat, dead flat.  Despite it all, we drove about a mile on her wheel before finding air, and then continuing to the shop.  Turns out they’d replace the left front tire, not the left rear, the one that had been blown and replaced.  So, we sat at the tire shop for about an hour and a half while they removed the tire, found the hole, melted some rubber, sealed it, replaced it on the wheel, and then replaced the wheel on the car.  Whew.

Tires Suck

Go to my flickr for pictures from the last week, this google uploading business takes me at least an hour for about 5 or 6 photos, all arranged properly.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexkrengel/sets/72157625053023584/