Gomeria

Well, Pastor George and Jeanne are in Orlando for a few weeks and they left us their car to use while they are gone. We are a two-car family once again. Of course that was until today when the left front tire started going flat. There is a tiny tire repair place, gomeria, in Charamicos a neighborhood close to where we live. Melissa was driving the flat, so I met here their and we switched cars. It was actually a short wait in Dominican standards. I was only there for maybe 30 minutes. They were working on a few motorconchos, the motorcycle taxis that are common transportation for the area. Kate noted the other day, "I think there are more motorcycles than cars here." She is right. They were banging tires onto the motorcycles with a flat piece of metal. It seemed downright prehistoric, or as though they had my handyman technique down, you can fix anything with a hammer!!! Then all of a sudden they pull out a air compression powered lug nut remover. What??? One minute they are bullying a tire into place with a piece of metal, and then they pull out a power tool? You just never know. And speaking of never knowing, it cost me all of 50 pesos. That is just over $1.50 (32 pesos to the dollar if you want to do the math) or the equivalant of two 12 ounce cans of Dr. Pepper. The entire process consisted of waiting about 15 minutes while they hammered the motorcycles, then the guy jacks up the car, brings over the power tool to remove the lug nuts, rolls the tire into the repair shack (I took a picture, but only had my cell phone and don't know how to get it off the phone and actually us it), I wait another 10 minutes he rolls the tire back out, puts it on, and says it was a clavo. A what I ask, he says he'll bring it out. It's a nail. My new spanish word of the day is clavo. I pay 50 pesos and hope they really patched it. Just a little bit of today's adventures.