Okay, I don’t hate all tires. And really, isn’t that a ridiculous thing to hate? They’re such an ubiquitous and necessary part of modern life.
But oh did they piss me off yesterday.
Let’s backtrack. On Tuesday our aging truck wouldn’t start. When I say “aging” I mean old. It’s a 1994 Ranger with just a tick under 200,000 miles on it. Clearly we need to replace it, but with a year left on the Beetle and a mortgage less than a month away, that won’t be happening in the near future. As you might expect with a vehicle of that many miles, every once in a while things go wrong. Over the last few months I’ve replaced the battery and the terminals on the battery cables. Still, the damn thing wouldn’t start again. Usually this isn’t a big deal, as the Missus and I carpool. On Wednesday though, I would need the truck since Ensie had to be in Los Angeles all day. We jumped the truck, and dropped it off at the repair guys Tuesday morning. When we picked it up that evening we were okay; they replaced the battery cables this time. Everything was fine. The mechanic did mention that the rear driver’s side tire was low and they filled it.
I checked it later that evening, and it looked fine.
When Ensie left she let me know, that no… the tire was completely flat. Okay, I’ll call work and let then know I’ll be a tad late. I’ll slap on the spare and take the tire in to be repaired.
Only I have no idea how to get the damned spare off this truck. It’s on the underside, and with the tow package we had installed, you can’t fit the freakin’ tire iron on the bolt holding it on. I called the professionals. The tow truck company said it would be about 2 hours. I call work again, let them know I’ll be little later than I thought. Tow truck guy shows up. He can’t fill the flat tire, so he spends 30 minutes prying the spare off. He later would describe it as the “biggest pain in the ass spare in the world”.
Now I have the spare on, and I head over to the tire place. They say they’re able to fix the tire, and they do. At this point, I’ve only missed half a days work. I get there, my boss is understanding, everything is fine… right?
Of course not. When I come back down to the truck to leave, the damned tire is flat again.. My tire place did a lovely job fixing it, didn’t they? I call my wife, who has just arrived home from LA, and we decide she’ll pick me up, and we will have the damned thing towed to get new tires tomorrow. Halfway to me though, she decides it would be a better idea to have the tire fixed tonight. So I call another tow truck to come over and swap out the damned spare. He comes quick, spends his own time bitching about the spare tire set up on the truck. We then take the truck to a closer tire place. This is about 6:30 PM. The tire guy (I’m sure that is his official title) tells us there is a wait, but he can have it done -we’ve now decided just to replace all 4 tires (how we made that leap I don’t know)- about 9. This is less a problem than you might think. We decide to go to dinner, plus there is the local IKEA in the same parking lot, and hell, we need to find some furniture. We come back at nine.
And they haven’t even started our truck yet. I send the Missus home -no use in both of us hanging around. It takes the tire guys another hour to get done, and they of course spend a good portion of the time bitching about our spare tire set-up.
Should have just told them to toss the damned thing into the back.
Posted by Frinklin at June 30, 2005 11:31 PM