It should be simple....

And this time, it was! I drove downtown for a few errands and noticed on my drive back home that there was this odd noise from the rear tire.... when I stopped I saw the imbedded bolt that shouldn't have been there. The tire wasn't flat... yet .... but would be soon.

As an English speaker in a French speaking city, I've tried hard to learn the language, but 'I ran over a bolt and it is stuck in my tire, can you please fix it now?' hasn't yet appeared on my French class homework and vocabulary list... and by the way, the French I do know is apparently unintelligible to the natives. So when my usual helper at the auto garage proved to be unavailable, my choices were 1) drive to the garage across town and hope they could fix it 2) wait until tomorrow to do the same, when the tire might well be flat... or try and muddle my way through on the phone in French with someone else.

My lovely husband had a thought - the garage 50 meters down the street could fix the car if I took it down there. So I drove along to the shop, managed some level of communication with the mechanic, who kindly fixed the tire. 10 minutes later - viola! Problem solved, and this time, it WAS simple!!