Traveling – sounds great, huh? Well we do a lot of it and have had some real adventures while on the road. My name is Debbie Johnson, Doug Johnson’s wife, and we are the Geico Motorcycle team owners. Every once in a while Karen lets me give everyone some insight of racing life from a non-racer. I’m truly just along for the ride.
Since we began racing I have always thought that our life style is very similar to being in the circus or gypsies if you will. That being said, we seem to always have that wanderlust to move about as soon as possible. We left our home in south Florida, Sunday afternoon headed to Baytown, Texas, for the O’Reilly Spring Nationals to avoid the Monday morning rush. We made it to the Tallahassee Sunday night and then the next evening we meant friends at a casino east of Lake Charles, La. After a quiet and restful night we were going to have breakfast at the casino and then head to the track, which was only about 130 miles away.
A knock at the door and a very nice gentleman brought a change of plans for the day. When I answered the door he asked if I wanted the bad news or the good news. I told him to choose. He asked if I new that we had a flat tire. My answer was a surprised – NO! Doug went out to check out the situation and found a huge bolt imbedded between the treads and a really flat tire. After the normal male consultations with our friends, the decision was made to eat first and then they would fix it.
Well, breakfast was great and as we walked out of the casino, I found a 24-hour tire repair service in Lake Charles which I mistakenly suggested that this would be the best way for a quick repair. My belly was full and my brain had slipped into that normal female role of making decisions which were according to the male logic was way out of my capabilities and this idea was nixed immediately.
After about an hour of attempting to put air in the tire and also to get the tire to reattach to the rim, which included wrapping the tire with some type of tie down to hold it in place they gave up and went with my idea to call the road service guy.
Here is where the real laugh of the day began. Since the men had to stand and “watch the flat tire” they gave the assignment of calling the “road service guy!” I called the number and Road Service Guy began firing questions at me, like it was another male test to see just how much did I really know.
His first question was “Where are you?” When I answered him, he said “Wow, that’s a long way! I’ll have to charge you $70 to come out there!” I replied, “Great, come on out, we’ll be here.” So now he says, “Well, it’s going to take me about 45 minutes to an hour to get there.” I replied, “Great, come on out.” Then came the technical test to see just how informed I was; he said, “Do you have a spare tire?” And what size tire do you need?” Well, Doug had given me the size number, which I gave to Road Service Guy. Then came the Bill Engvall question of the day from Road Service Guy: “You are going to be there, right?” I didn’t but I wanted to say, “Well, we checked with the other tires and they say they are not going to carry to weight of the flat tire, so, yeah, we’re going to be here. HERE’S YOUR SIGN!”