Had a fabulous day today, really top-notch: On the way home from work this evening, I picked up a nail in my rear tire. Result: flat. Great.

I discovered this at the halfway point on the ride home when I pulled off the freeway because I was falling asleep (again) (there’s a future entry in that asleep-at-the-handlebars thing) and had to get off the bike and walk around to wake up. The halfway point is exactly 33.5 miles from home. (Yes, I have an insanely long commute.)

So I’m 30 miles from home with a flat tire on my motorcycle at 5:30 pm in friggin’ La Mirada, where the only thing I know is around is the Jack in the Box parking lot I’m parked in. Great.

Fortunately, I have AAA, so I called them. True to form, they couldn’t help me. When my truck crapped out 60 miles from home last year they wouldn’t tow it further than 5 miles because I hadn’t paid for some obscure option. I paid for the obscure option and they towed me — and charged me by the mile to do it. This time, the girl said she was sorry but they couldn’t help me because I don’t have RV coverage.

Yeah. RV coverage.

“I don’t have an RV,” I pointed out to her in as calm a voice as I was able to muster. “Like I said, I have a fucking MOTORCYCLE!!!” She took a moment to swab the blood from her now-punctured eardrum and then explained to me that Triple A requires RV coverage to tow motorcycles. I took a moment to take a deep breath so I could yell very loudly and use many curse words and utter long, angry sentences, then I explained to her that my MOTORCYCLE doesn’t have a fucking SHOWER or MICROWAVE OVEN or fucking SLIDE OUT LIVING ROOM or BREAKFAST NOOK or even a goddamn CAPTAIN’S CHAIR because it’s a MOTHERFUCKING MOTORCYCLE, not a TWENTY-FUCKING-SIX FOOT LONG RV, so why the fuck would I even HAVE RV coverage???

Poor, brave, underpaid little girl. She stuck to her script, I have to give her credit for that. She started to explain again that motorcycles are covered under the RV con– And then I hung up on her. Because I couldn’t get my hands through the phone to strangle her.

Fortunately, there was a Lowe’s right next door, so I walked over and grabbed a tire repair kit and a can of Fix-a-Flat (Who know a Home & Garden center carried that crap?) and got to work on repairing my tire and fixing my flat.

No joy. Fix-a-Flat is nasty, evil stuff that doesn’t work on spoked wheels. It inflates the tire just barely slightly and then oozes out around all the spokes. The instructions also said, however, that after driving for 2-4 miles the fix-goop stuff would plug the hole and the tire would somehow magically reinflate, so I climbed on board and gingerly got back on the freeway.

2-4 miles later, I pulled over at the next gas station. Tire: still flat, not even slightly reinflated anymore. I tried putting more air in it. Spokes: vigorously oozing evil, nasty stuff. Tire: still flat, not even pretending to be inflated anymore.

Fuck me sideways. 30 miles from home, 6 pm in friggin’ Commerce now, and I’ve still got a flat. My options were few and they all ended with … “and get the bike to a shop” and all involved somehow transporting myself from home to where ever the bike was in the morning.

So I rode it home. 30 miles on a flat tire on Southern California freeways in rush hour traffic. And I made it home alive (obviously). Not the smartest thing I could have done, but coordinating the repairs tomorrow from home is going to be much easier than if I’d left it in Commerce. Plus, I know it’ll still be there in the morning, so I’ve got that going for me.

And just so you know, what they say about there being no human kindness in the world anymore is wrong. Three people tried to help me on my terrifying 45-mph ride home in the slow lane — they all helpfully pulled up next to me to tell me my rear tire was flat. Because, you know, maybe I hadn’t noticed and was only going 45 because speed scares me. But hey, they tried to help, they were being nice.

Everyone else tried to kill me.