DAY TEN ON THE ROAD
The following morning John offered to change my soaking wet diaper while Mom was in the ladies room. I managed to work up the nerve to ask him if I could go without a diaper now.
My reasoning was, “I don’t want grandma to see me like this.”
I said it in a soft, yet earnest whisper.
Since leaving California the rules of what I considered ‘normal life’ had been thrown out the window and I had been forced to learn to live by the rules of the road as Mom and John came up with them. On the road they had come up with the rule that I had to be in diapers day or night. Okay, that one threw me for a loop at first, but I had learned (for the most part) to live according to that rule. But we were nearing the end of the road trip, and I was hoping that at the end, the rules of the road would be abandoned for the older California rules. So why then was I so surprised when John offered a compromise?
“It’s only a few more hours until we get there. I’ll stop before we get into town so that you can put on regular underwear again. How’s that sound?”
I beamed and nodded enthusiastically.
“Good!” he added as he zipped up my pants for me.
I should have known that John would once again let me down by not keeping up his end of the bargain.
We hadn’t been back on the road even an hour before we had a tire blow-out. It was loud which made both Mom and me scream as the car swerved and skidded nearly out of control. It was the right, front passenger tire that blew and bits of tire flew up past the passenger side windows as John attempted to get our car off the highway and onto the shoulder of the road.
Scary isn’t a strong enough word for those few seconds that it took John to get the car stopped. The car shook and swerved and some stupid jerk had the nerve to blow his horn at us as if John was purposefully driving so erratically.
Once the car was stopped, John asked, “Everyone alright?”
“Yeah I’m good,” I spoke up, “but can we not do that again?”
John and Mom got out, but I was told to stay in the car. I did as I’d been told, however I rolled the window down so that I could stick my head out to see how bad it was. It was bad … really bad! Not only was the tire thrashed to bits, so was the front fender. It looked like a large piece of the tire must have been flapping as the wheel turned. It had laid waste to our fender, tearing through the metal as if it had been nothing more than aluminum foil.
Now what was cool was what happened next. While mom and John were looking at the damage, this enormous man on this loud chopper pulled up behind us. When he got off his motorcycle I was struck with awe at just how big that man was. I’d seen lots of bodybuilders on the beach and they were big, but next to this bad biker dude they would have looked like scrawny wimps!
“That was a fancy bit of driving back there mate!” the mountainous man said to John, “Thought for sure you were Dingo bait.”
When he spoke he talked with an Australian accent, however his extremely deep voice mottled it a bit.
When John responded I could hear the fear in his voice as that man, who had to be at least seven foot tall, walked up to him and mom. “Uh, yeah well, I think we had a flat.”
“He thinks?” I thought to myself.
“I’d say!” the man said. “You done a real dagger to your fender!”
“Dagger?” I asked.
“Alvin get back in the car!” Mom said while pushing on my head until it was all the way back inside.
“Fine looking ankle-biter you got there mam. Names Doug, Doug Blisken, but most just call me Dog.” He said thrusting his hand out for John to shake.
I noticed right away that his knuckles were tattooed with a single letter on each finger; they spelled out K-I-L-L.
“I’m John and this is my wife, Melody.” John said shaking the Dog’s hand.
I caught a glimpse of the back of Dog’s leather jacket and seen that it said, “Hell’s Angels” with a big flaming skull in the middle.
“Oh that’s not good!” I mumbled to myself.
A year or two back there was a big problem when a bunch of Hells Angel’s bikers came through Chula-Vista. There was some trouble with the police and several of the bikers had been arrested for driving their motorcycles on the beach.
“G’day cobber.” He said and then asked, “Don’t suppose you have a spare?”
When Mom told him we did Dog then said, “Well then little miss, she’ll be Apples.”
“I’m Sorry?” Mom asked him.
“Oh sorry,” Dog said pulling the black bandana off his head, “sometimes forget myself. Uh, what I meant was that everything will be all right.”
Unfortunately the spare tire was buried beneath all of our stuff so John and Dog had to take everything out to get to it.
“Oy, ya got a Joey do ya?” I heard dog ask.
For half a second I thought maybe Joey had stowed away in the back of our car, but then I heard John ask, “What’s a Joey?”
Dog answered with, “Ya know, a wee one, a baby.”
“Oh no, those are for our son.” John replied and I knew instantly that Dog had seen the package of diapers.
“Ah I get it. Young fella’s got a leaky donger does he?” Dog didn’t need to translate that one for us.
I slunk down in the seat and tried to hide my face. When they finally got the tire out Dog said, “Ah, there you are ya little beauty!” and it didn’t take them long to get the tire changed.
“Ah, have a gander at that mate!” Dog said holding the shredded wheel up.
At hearing that, I sat back up and looked out the car window. I saw for myself that the rim of the tire was missing a large piece of the metal on the inside part.
“Well that’s not good.” John said with half a laugh.
“Bit of a nasty like that, you’re lucky you didn’t have a real gutzer … uh … accident!” Dog explained.