Blurbex

Just walked home — from Crescent Lake to Placido Bayou in St. Pete – to the tune of, oh, about five or six miles. Here’s why: 

I was driving north on 16th Street, having left a Rays game, when my Prius started riding like a Peterbilt tractor trailer. I’m a little slow on the uptake with car stuff, so it took me a few hundred yards to realize I had a flat rear right tire. I pulled over into the parking lot of a mom-and-pop convenient store, opened the hatch and started looking for the spare.

The lighting was bad, and on a good day it would probably take me ‘til dawn to figure out how to change the tire – if I could even find it. Plus, I wasn’t really digging the vibe in the place. So I figured I’d drive up a little ways, real slow, find a brighter spot, and assess my situation. Blinkers on. 12 mph. I made a right on 9th Ave. No., a left on MLK.

Then I saw the lights of a cop car behind me.

I pulled into a side street. Police are gonna lend a hand, I thought. One of the officers asked me for license and registration. Turns out it’s illegal to drive on a flat tire, and it’ll get you a $141 fine in St. Petersburg. That’s what the policeman told me.

I explained that I was looking for a safer, better-lit spot to pull over, that I’d never changed the tire on the Prius and didn’t even know where the spare was, that I didn’t know it was illegal to drive on a flat but now that I thought about it, it made sense, that my wife was out of town and I didn’t have a AAA card.  This was all 100-percent true, but the cop at first seemed incredulous. I shrugged, as if to say, ‘What can I tell ya? I guess he decided to believe me.

 “You gonna drive that car home?” he asked. Odd question, I thought; I told him no. He gave me a pass. I thanked him. Then I made a mistake. I should’ve asked him if he was heading toward Placido Bayou – protect and serve and all that. I didn’t think of it until several miles of walking later. 

I stood in on the residential street wondering what to do. I even called my wife in Chicago. She didn’t answer. I decided to leg it, make it down to the Ringside or Harvey’s on 4th Street, call a cab and have a beer while I waited.  A few hundred yards into the walk, I thought, “Hell, that’s not manly at all. I should just hoof it all the way home.” I kicked it up a notch. Why not get some exercise in? 

I wish I could say I enjoyed the walk. I will say I didn’t hate it. And I’m glad I didn’t stop and call a cab. I’m not a sedentary guy, so all I got was a sweated-up T-shirt and a sore Achilles tendon. It took me a little under an hour. The weirdest part was that two or three times I drifted deep into thought, then looked up and was not quite sure where I was. I’m so used to seeing these streets through a windshield that I got disoriented as a pedestrian. That seemed kind of sad. 

I walked up to the guard gate at Placido Bayou and said to a white-haired lady on duty, “I don’t know the protocol, but I’m a resident and I’m on foot.” She checked the database and my ID. Then she opened the gate for me, just like I was driving. I guess she doesn’t deal with many pedestrians.

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