Flare Jokes

Reading jerry298's story about the life-raft in the VW inspired me to write
down an incident that happened to me about 10 years ago. Like Jerry, it
took me about 5 years to see the humor in it.
About 10 years ago, I bought a used van to drive back and forth to my cottage
on weekends. It had previously been owned by a company called "Canada Dredge
and Dock." This gave it some notoriety since they were at the time involved
in a big local political scandal involving rigged bidding on dredging
contracts.
One weekend at the cottage I was giving it a good cleaning out
when I discovered a red cylinder labeled "Emergency Flare" in one of the door
pockets. I thought "Well, that's not a bad thing to have in the car." and
left it there. Sure enough, on the way home that weekend, we had a flat tire.
I should say that our cottage is in the middle of a very popular vacation
area north of Toronto, and the weekend in more...