spare tire access?

We just got back from a long fall motorcycle tour, on a pair of BMW GS1200 Adventures, one with factory bags, one with Jesse's. Plenty of room for gear. The lobster in Maine was nice, as well as Hemings Motor News in Vermont, and watching the game in a sports bar in Albany. Did you know that Hemings has their own private restoration musuem?

Anyhow, we left town on the bike trip in summer and returned in fall, and the warm weather had turned to rain and cold. This morning, we had to take the Tacoma to town for the new BW3's store for wings and beer, we beat the church crowd...And got a tire low pressure light on the way to town.

So, pulled the truck into the barn, got an airhose and gage and started checking tires...and when I got to the spare, I used a speed handle, long extension and large flat bit to drop the tire to check the pressure.

My lovely wife, while seeing me drop the tire to check pressure and replace comments thus:

On night, working an overnight shift in the State Mental Health Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, my phone rang and it was my ex-husband, but while we were still married. It was from the shoulder of I-675, the loop around the east side of Dayton. He didn't know how to lower his spare tire to fix a flat and wanted me to come help. He finally had to call road side service, as in a tow truck driver, to change his tire. Since it was dark out, and he didn't want to learn how to do it himself.

It gave me a good chuckle.

If you can't figure how to change the tire on the truck you are driving, should you be driving it? (now heavy trucks that need airtools are a different story, pulling off and breaking down budd wheels by hand is a learned skill)

I might have worn out a tire spoon or two over they years...

Howard