Saturday Romps

I got my snow tires taken off of my car yesterday. So naturally today one of my regular tires decided to have a blow out while I was driving to IF for taiji. First, I felt this strange wobbly vibration in the car and the steering wheel. I wasn't sure what it was, though it occurred to me it could be a tire. I figured I'd pull off at the nearest exit to check it out. It had other ideas, and popped right after I'd passed a pickup. So I pulled off to the side and had to dig out my spare tire and jack. Luckily, it was on the passenger side, so I had my car between me and the 75 mph traffic. I actually enjoyed changing the tire (nice, simple, physical activity), but it did make me twenty minutes late for taiji. And this afternoon I had to replace said tire. The blowout was rather impressive, actually. The entire outer section of rubber (the surfaces which contacts the road) had been torn from the inner support section, but was still in one piece. This meant that I had to get the car up higher to get the tire to come off, but such is life. Strangely, the hardest part of the process was getting the rim off so that I could get to the bolts. The rim did NOT want to part company from the tire.

And James made it to taiji today, for the first time in over a month (unless he was there last week when I missed). I got to push hands with him. I really like pushing hands with him, because he has an excellent root. Which means that when I get something to WORK on him, I had to have used my own root and my waist. Nothing else will move him. There was one point where I just busted up laughing at him. He was trying to push me out, and pushed on my forward (left) thigh from one side. Then he pushed on the other side of the thigh. Then he actually reached under my leg and tried to bodily lift it up from the ground. He couldn't do it. I was too well-rooted. Well, up until I busted up laughing I was. It was a classic cartoon moment, I swear. Big huge guy (compared to me, anyway) grunting and groaning to try and lift my leg and foot off the ground. I was also pleased that my root WAS that good. *grins*