Flat Tire

What does life in the Communications Age mean? It means getting lunch when and where you want it -- even if where you want it is on the Jones Falls Expressway.Meet Sue Surell and Ellen Saval, partners in business, entrepreneurs. They have a franchise for FUTUREKIDS in Lutherville; they train children to use computers. Sue and Ellen also have kids of their own -- three each to be exact -- in either preschool or elementary school.Last Wednesday, they went to the computer show at the Convention Center and, after checking out the latest in software, headed up the expressway in Ellen's car. Both women wanted to be home when their kids returned from school.

Dave Rahme, the veteran scribe for The Post-Standard who has covered Syracuse, opened his article on No. 7 Syracuse's 11-7 loss to No. 2 Johns Hopkins Saturday with the following sentences: The Syracuse University lacrosse team lost by four goals at No. 1 Virginia three weeks ago but never seemed out of the game. It lost by four goals Saturday at No. 2 Johns Hopkins and never seemed to be in it. Rahme's article encapsulated the Orange's display at Homewood Field in Baltimore.

A mechanic and the man whose flat tire he was fixing were killed yesterday after a tractor-trailer struck them on the side of the road, state police said.Russell Evans, 29, of the first block of Teresa Ave. in Rising Sun, and Dornell Demoin Jackson, 31, of Inglewood, Calif., were changing the tire on Jackson's tractor-trailer on Interstate 95 near Havre de Grace when they were hit.Investigators said Jackson had been traveling south on I-95 at about 3: 30 a.m. when the tractor portion of his truck got a flat tire.

ARENBERG, France — A punctured tire Tuesday may have popped the balloon of Lance Armstrong's Tour de France chances. After an ill-timed flat left Armstrong pedaling furiously and ultimately alone, without a teammate left to lead him back to the front, the seven-time champion fell from fifth overall to 18th after the 132.36-mile Stage 3 from Wanze, Belgium, to the finish line here, the first in France. Yet not even his ferocious efforts over the last few miles into this mining town — where dust covered the bikes and coated the faces of riders — could save him from dropping chunks of time to some of his main rivals.

Man fixing flat tire is assaulted, robbedTwo men assaulted and robbed a Baltimore County man Friday evening as he tried to fix a flat tire in the 600 block of West Nursery Road in Linthicum, police said.Charles O'Neil, 24, of Baltimore Highlands told officers that one of the tires went flat about 8 p.m., police said.As he fixed his tire, two men came up behind him, pushed him into the car fender, grabbed his wallet and ran toward the Beltway. He was not injured, police said.

POLICE LOG* Marriottsville: A blue 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass was stolen between 6 a.m. and 4:10 p.m. on Feb. 4 from the 1500 block of Marriottsville Road, Howard County police said. A flat tire that was on the car was left in the yard. The car didn't have tags.

Anne Arundel County police searched the home yesterday of a 37-year-old Millersville woman whose body was found three months ago in Howard County.Officers spent two hours going through Terry Lee Keefer's house in the 600 block of Cog Court. They would not say what they were seeking.In September, Ms. Keefer's body was found in woods off Route 216 near Scaggsville by a State Highway Administration surveyor. Last month, a medical examiner determined she was strangled or suffocated.Her 1984 Toyota Tercel station wagon was found at 3 a.m. July 29, abandoned with a flat tire on Interstate 97 near her home.

THE BURDENS of the world seem lighter after you fix a wheelbarrow tire. It is a pretty easy fix, a simple shot of tire inflator does the trick, provided you are not afraid of spiders. When a large spotted spider dropped out of the wheelbarrow I was working on, there was, as Jerry Lee Lewis used to sing, "A whole lot of shakin' goin' on." The spider scooted south, I jumped north. We both seemed happy not to see each other again. The wheelbarrow had a flat tire. It was not my personal property.

A Baltimore County woman who had stopped to fix a flat tire on Interstate 95 was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by two men, one of them armed with a folding penknife, late Wednesday night, Maryland State Police said.The woman, in her 30s, was driving north on I-95 when she pulled off to the shoulder north of Route 175 to fix a flat tire about 11: 30 p.m., police said. She was trying to find the spare tire in her trunk when the two men approached and offered to help.One of the men then pulled out the knife and took the woman back into her car, police said.

A Baltimore County councilman charged with drunken driving after a weekend crash on the Beltway said in a statement yesterday that he is "thankful no one was injured" and that he accepts "responsibility for my actions." Councilman Stephen G. Samuel Moxley, a Catonsville Democrat, said in a statement, "I want to apologize for the embarrassment that I've caused my colleagues, my constituents, and most of all my family. I will continue to work to regain their trust." The councilman's comments came two days after the incident on the Beltway between Wilkens Avenue and Frederick Road.

When James H. McDonald was 16, back when Baltimore was legally segregated, he set out to apply for a job in a drugstore a few blocks into the white side of town. Almost as soon as he'd set foot over Fulton Avenue, the dividing line, he had company. "This gentleman - he said he was a policeman - asked what I was doing there," said McDonald, now 80. McDonald, who was followed to the store to prove that there was indeed a job opening, offered the story Monday as an example of life before the civil-rights activists made inroads, before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and long before a black man was elected president.

Joe Flacco stood in the warm sunshine outside the Castle on Wednesday, in the only place where he doesn't look totally comfortable: in front of a microphone. The Ravens had just finished their morning walk-through in preparation for Sunday's game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Now it was time to talk to the media. Flacco looked like a man who had just discovered a flat tire. "Joe," went the first question, "was the way you played last week especially satisfying?" Flacco shook his head no. Wait a minute, you wanted to say. Fourteen straight completions in a 30-7 rout of the Denver Broncos, 20-for-25 passing for 175 yards, including a 20-yard laser to Derrick Mason for a touchdown - that didn't give you an extra thrill?

For most people, the answer to "When's the last time you had a flat tire?" is usually "Never" or "Gee, not in a long time" or some answer suggesting a low probability of occurrence. But not me. Me, I get flat tires all the time. In fact, by the time you read this, I've probably gotten another three or four flats to push my overall total to, oh, 70, easy. But until the other day, I had never had a tire blow out on me, an experience you want to definitely avoid if at all possible. The blowout took place on a busy four-lane highway in Baltimore County.

A Baltimore County councilman charged with drunken driving after a weekend crash on the Beltway said in a statement yesterday that he is "thankful no one was injured" and that he accepts "responsibility for my actions." Councilman Stephen G. Samuel Moxley, a Catonsville Democrat, said in a statement, "I want to apologize for the embarrassment that I've caused my colleagues, my constituents, and most of all my family. I will continue to work to regain their trust." The councilman's comments came two days after the incident on the Beltway between Wilkens Avenue and Frederick Road.

DETROIT - Flat tires aren't likely to disappear anytime soon, but for some drivers, changing a flat by the side of the road is becoming a thing of the past. Since the early 1990s, one solution has been run-flat tires, which keep rolling after losing all their air. But these tires have been available mostly on sports cars, not on the kinds of vehicles most people drive, such as sport utility vehicles or minivans. French tire maker Michelin has developed a system that extends run-flat capability to minivans and SUVs while also eliminating some of the drawbacks of traditional run-flats, also known as self-supporting tires.

THE BURDENS of the world seem lighter after you fix a wheelbarrow tire. It is a pretty easy fix, a simple shot of tire inflator does the trick, provided you are not afraid of spiders. When a large spotted spider dropped out of the wheelbarrow I was working on, there was, as Jerry Lee Lewis used to sing, "A whole lot of shakin' goin' on." The spider scooted south, I jumped north. We both seemed happy not to see each other again. The wheelbarrow had a flat tire. It was not my personal property.

City police were looking yesterday for a 21-year-old Northwest Baltimore man wanted in the sledgehammer beating of a mechanic Wednesday in a dispute over how to fix a tire.Police issued an arrest warrant late Friday for Abdu Mohammad Yahya of the 3600 block of Oakmont Ave., charging him with attempted first-degree murder, assault and use of a deadly weapon.The victim in the beating, Manley Maxwell, 36, of Randallstown has been upgraded from critical to fair condition at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said Detective Lynette D. Nevins of the homicide unit.

To properly fix a flat bicycle tire, you gotta be willing to bleed. That is what Matt Beverley, a mechanic at Horizon Cycles on York Road, told me this week. He said I had to seek out the culprit, the cause of the flat, by running my fingertips along the interior of the punctured tire, exposing myself to potential puncture wounds. This, he said, prevents the thorn or nail from striking again, taking out the replacement tube, a few miles down the road. "Fixing a flat is like doing a brake job on your car," said Beverley, who has been a bicycle mechanic for 12 years.

A key witness who said she helped David A. Dicus dump his wife's body after he strangled her began what is expected to be at least two days of testimony yesterday, most of it contentious, as the defense tries to portray her as an unstable psychiatric patient who chronically lies.On the witness stand yesterday, Catherine S. McNicholas, 41, described nightmarish events of the early morning hours of July 29, 1995, saying she lied for three years about her involvement, because she feared that Dicus would do to her and her children what he did to his wife, Terry Lee Keefer.