A heads-up to all members of the North Shore Tramping Club: Don’t give Karen a hard time. She’s quite a sensitive type and might take unkindly to taunts, gybes, innuendos and sarcastic comments. Let me explain.
The run of cruel luck started on a trip to Kai Iwi Lakes last year when we got back to the bus and Karen saw that a back inner wheel was flat. Why are they never flat on the bottom? Sure enough, it was flat all the way around. Rob Moscrip, remembering his MT skills from seventy years earlier, scrambled under the truck in the pouring rain and showed us menfolk what to do with a jack, crowbar, assorted tools and blocks of wood. Little did we know how useful this newfound knowledge would be.
Fast forward to July 2016. We were motoring down SH2 on a delightful winter’s morn when a motorist overtook us, gesticulating and shouting at Karen, who was our driver once again. Had we left someone behind on the road? Had we run over a possum and splattered it all over the bus? No, we had a puncture.
This is my fourth puncture! Life isn’t fair! I checked the tyres with a baseball bat before we left this morning. The brakes were a bit slow releasing but it’s not my fault. Why do all these things happen when I’m driving? Woe is me. Actually, Karen didn’t say any of this, although she swore like a trooper—language that’s definitely not repeatable in this respectable publication.
We stopped just before Mangatawhiri to change the wheel. It was the inside rear wheel yet again. Ralph dived under the bus while I pulled out the tool tray and was immediately hit on the scone by a flying jimmy. Not happy. Blood everywhere; more swearing.
For the record, we managed to make it to Waharau in the Hunuas and climbed the Kohukohunui Track to Adam’s Lookout, although we didn’t complete the circuit due to time constraints. Apart from Tina falling over in the mud, the rest of the day was uneventful. Karen got us back to town just on dusk.
Remember what I said: take it easy on her because it wasn’t her fault. Honestly.
But the last word belongs to Ralph, the man under the bus …
After the driver overtakes us, hooting and tooting and waving at Karen, she drives on a couple of hundred metres and turns into a side road where there’s a hard, flat area and parks the bus.
Decision time. Should we call someone to come and change the wheel? No, that would cost a lot and take too long. Considering that we have two experts on board who had changed the same wheel last time—in the rain, no less—we decide we’re more than capable of doing it ourselves.
Out comes the equipment from the locker. Out comes the container with a big block of wood in it … down goes the wood and up it bounces, whacking David in the head. Damn! Now we’re down to one expert.
After a lot of thought, John says he knows how to get the wheels off. So in he goes, cracking nuts (wheel nuts, that is). The remaining, unwounded expert—me—crawls under the chassis to figure out how to jack up the bus and remove the spare wheel (which, fortunately, has air in it). I’ve never done this part before. I place the jack and take up the slack, then realise I probably shouldn’t be under the bus when the wheels come off. John agrees to tell me when all the nuts are slack before he jacks it up.
In the meantime I remove the securing nuts for the spare wheel and John winds down the spare wheel. I push the spare out from under the bus (heroically ignoring my recent hernia operation), John gives the signal, and I jack up the bus and crawl out. The wheel nuts are quickly removed and the inner wheel replaced.
Something occurs to me when the outer wheel goes on. “Shouldn’t the outer wheel be positioned so the valve for the inner wheel is accessible?” I say. Wise nods all round.
Off comes the outer wheel again and it’s rotated to the correct position. The outer wheel nuts are replaced, and back I go under the bus to lower it. Now Chris joins me, with John torquing up the nuts (FYI: the torque is approximately 1.5m x Chris’s weight).
I’m still under the bus, positioning the defective wheel before lifting it into place. John turns the handle. The wheel is up; now I just need to secure it with two nuts. John and Chris finish the torquing. The gear’s packed up and put back in the locker. Only one hour lost. Not too bad for a bunch of geriatrics.
After the workers among us clean up, we all get back in the bus and admire the material leaking from David’s forehead. Karen is happy because now she has even more experts to call on. And we all make a mental note that there should be at least three pairs of gloves on the bus at all times.