Wheel — Blog — Healy Chen

A touch of curbing

One of the worst feelings as a car enthusiast is doing damage to your own car. One day you’re driving along, having a good time, and then boom. Apparently you took a turn too sharply, and the back wheel had a brief kiss with the concrete curb. And now your wheel has a rather nasty rash on it. And by you, I mean me. It seems there is no car in my ownership history that I’ve not hit the wheel on the curbs at least once.

Perhaps I should take up the finance manager on the extra wheel and tire insurance next time…

Speaking of driving: now that my dad is proper retirement age, it slightly worries me whenever he gets behind the wheel. It’s plain fact that as we age, our attention and reflexes deteriorates. It only takes one scant moment of inattention for something negative to happen. If I can carelessly misjudge a corner, then my father at twice my age is just that much more accident-prone. It’s not a value judgement, simply math.

Whenever I get in my friends’ vehicles, I never have to stress about their driving. I can afford to pay zero attention to the road, and have pleasant conversations. Not so when riding in my dad’s Toyota RAV-4. I am compelled to pay attention to the road for him, on the off chance that his total bandwidth isn’t enough to spy that rogue truck that is running a red light. Who knew that getting driven around can be so un-relaxing.

So I solved the problem completely: whenever I am on the road with my dad (my mother doesn’t drive), I will always be the one driving. This gives me peace of mind, and also puts my destiny in my own hands. If the BMW M2 gets damaged - a wheel curbing, for example - I want it to be me who did it. Then I get to stew in my own stupidity for at least the rest of the day.

A touch of curb

It’s one of the most terrible sounds in the world: the wheel-rim of a car grinding on a sidewalk curb. Try as you may to be careful during parallel parking maneuvers, it only takes one moment of carelessness to ruin an otherwise perfect wheel. The feeling in the driver seat, the dread of getting out of the car to check damage, is uniquely dreadful to a car enthusiast.

We suffer greatly when we put too much value to things material.

It used to be that something as benign as curbing a wheel would absolutely ruin my day, though perhaps I am improving. Last Friday I had the unfortunate tragedy of tagging the M2’s right-front wheel on the curb as I was pulling off to the side to park. Thankfully, the damage isn’t too awful, but I just couldn’t help to bash myself with my own stupidity. Reality seems to always bite soon as you get too comfortable and complacent.

I quickly forgot about the transgression, however. I was on my weekly visit to see my friend’s kids. I owe it to them to give my undivided attention. Stewing over the mistake of curbing the wheel serves no purpose other than feeling bad for myself and showing a negative vibe to the kids. I was somewhat surprised then that I was indeed able to put the wheel damage behind me and devote fully to playing with the little ones.

I’ve come a long way from the intense obsessive compulsiveness vis a vis my cars that I used to have. Maybe if the actual damage was worse, I wouldn’t have been able to forget it so quickly. Either way, I’m glad I didn’t stress about something that I cannot turn back the clock to change.