Tall Tales

About once a year in cold weather, the tire pressure light comes on in my van. I got the tires rotated and checked just before this trip, so I thought maybe I would be able to skip the warning light this year. Alas, on a frosty morning just a few minutes after I hit the road toward Savannah, the light came on. I slowed down a little and stayed in the slow lane more than usual, just in case, but I really didn't want to try to do anything about it until I got to Savannah if I could avoid it. That would be about 100 more miles.

A hundred miles later, I arrived at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art. Founded in 1978, it is relatively new as colleges go and has an interesting approach to its campus. They have chosen to restore historic buildings in the older parts of Savannah for their classrooms and are spread out in 67 buildings throughout downtown. It seems everywhere you look, you see SCAD on the side of a building. I didn't read about the spread-out nature of the college before I got to town, so when I started seeing SCAD everywhere, I got confused about how to find the museum. I found the parking lot mentioned on the museum website, but it was cold and windy and I didn't want to just park and then wander around trying to find the museum.  So I found a visitor info building and got more precise directions. I commented to the woman at the counter that SCAD was on the side of 20 buildings in the area. Little did I know it was much worse than that.

Armed with my new directions, I went back to the parking lot and found a space to park. Figuring out how to pay for parking involved more walking in the wind than I preferred, but I eventually paid for parking and found the museum entrance. When I went up to the welcome desk, I learned that all the exhibit spaces were closed while new exhibits were being installed. All except the lobby and a theater-like room showing some animated short videos. They weren't charging admission since I could only see the lobby and the videos.

I walked in about halfway through one of the short videos and felt pretty lost. The artist responsible for all the videos is from Hong Kong and the narration is in one of the Chinese languages -- I have no idea whether it's Mandarin or Cantonese. The subtitles are in Chinese and English and change frequently to keep up with the narration. It's a challenge to keep up with the narration and still catch the visuals. It helps that the visuals are relatively simple, reminiscent of early video games. The stories are tall tales that end with a moral to the story. The one I walked in on the middle of was about conjoined triplet rabbits that had different ideas about what kinds of careers they wanted, and how that led to their demise when one of them decided to murder the others to get his way. It was a very, very tall tale, and walking into the middle of it made no sense at all. I stayed through all the other videos to watch this one from beginning to end. Finally I understood the context for the moral to that story:

But I know better than to try to explain it any further. 😜

The next story was about a chicken with a seizure disorder who became a police officer, and all the good he did for the relationship between citizens and police. Then he was assigned to a kidnapping case and was coordinating the rescue. Under pressure he had a seizure and the rescue team mistook that for their signal to act. As a result of their mis-timed action, everyone involved died except the chicken who had the seizure. 

The tales were very, very, very tall and sometimes funny and sometimes shocking and sometimes sad. That wouldn't have been my first choice for what to see at an art museum, but since it was basically the only thing to see, I gave it a kind of attention it would not otherwise have gotten from me. I was as ready as I was going to get to walk back through the cold wind to my van and then go check into the hotel. Then maybe figure out what to do about my tire pressure light. 

I know that tire pressure gauges at gas stations are not always reliable, and I didn't know which tire(s) the light was complaining about, so I was not looking forward to figuring it out in the cold wind. Then I had a thought... what about AAA? This isn't a flat tire or an emergency, but I know they have tire service trucks... maybe I could call and have them deal with it? I pay enough for roadside service and I hardly ever use it. So I called and yes! They could be at the hotel in less than an hour. While I waited I looked at dinner options online, so by the time the technician put an extra 5 PSI of air in each of my front tires, I was ready to do something about being hungry. After driving to the restaurant and back the warning light turned off, so I'm good to go. As long as it doesn't come back on again soon, I'll assume that it's just the annual ritual. It also reminded me that I've been intending to get a small air compressor to carry with me. The standard ones you see advertised widely don't work on big tires like the ones on my van, but the one the guy with the tire service truck had was compact and worked. It was slow, but it worked. I wish I'd thought to find out what kind it was. Reading reviews of the various models for sale on amazon makes me skeptical that I'd be as happy with buying one as I was with calling AAA. So for now, I'll just remember that if it happens again I can call AAA. 😎