Val Pushes Her Envelope

Every now and then, I have to vary my routine. How else am I going to find things to blog about? Last Thursday, I headed over to Bill-Paying Town to shop at their Walmart. I'd been planning the trip all week. To get some delicious Black Market (okay, I know that's not the name of it, but it's close) BBQ Chicken Wraps that I like to have for lunch. And some Pinwheel thingies. All the regular Walmart nearer to Backroads has is Chicken Bacon Ranch. And they always seem to forget the bacon. Of course, I was also going to pick up some of the new lottery tickets at different locations, and get my 44 oz Diet Coke on the way home.

As I put T-Hoe into gear to back out of the garage, I saw that the warning light said to check tire pressure. Well. There are always three or four warning lights going off, since Hick doesn't seem to get T-Hoe completely fixed, even when we pay over $500 to have him supposedly fixed. The tire sensors haven't worked right for at least 3 years. And the back-up and side beepers don't work. And the service suspension thingy is always on. So I don't pay a lot of attention to those warnings.

Still, since I hadn't noticed the flat tire symbol before, I figured I'd check the sensor thingy. Huh. As I was going down Neighbor Barn Hill, I saw that my left front tire had 38 pounds of pressure, and the right front tire had 9 pounds of pressure. Still better than the rear tires, which had, respectively, --- pounds, and --- pounds of pressure. I told you the sensor doesn't work!

Just to be safe, I pulled off at the first gravel offshoot, where many years ago I came home to find the road blocked by the county sheriff's posse, due to the discovery of an abandoned portable meth lab. Yeah. It was several years before they found the headless body in a septic tank a little farther up our road. I got out and walked around. I figured it the tire was flat, I'd go back home and get A-Cad for my shopping trip.

The tire looked good. As good as the driver's side tire. So I figured it was just the bad sensors, and continued to town. Or at least to the mailboxes. The mail has been getting here earlier now. It was 10:30. So I stopped to check. When I stepped out of T-Hoe down by the mailboxes, I almost stepped on THIS:

It's a dime. Dime, dime, dime. No pennies from heaven. Dime.

That's right. A dime, all dusty in the gravel. What in tarnation a dime was doing there, I don't know. It's not like the three pennies I found earlier in the week in Orb K, by the register. I don't think anybody's whipping out money down on the gravel road. Anyhoo...because I have been thinking about my dad lately, the dime made me remember how we found dimes all over our house for month or two after he died.

So...I picked up this dime, and thought about my tire troubles, and how my dad was the one who taught me to check things on my car (the yellow Chevy Vega hatchback and the yellow Chevy Chevette hatchback) like the tire pressure and the oil and the washer fluid and the radiator and how to change an air filter and fuses and a flat tire. So after looking for the not-yet-delivered mail, I went back to look at the tire again. And it was just fine. Same as the driver's side tire. So I went to town.

I stopped at Orb K to cash in a $50 lottery winner, and get a new $5 ticket. When I came out, I thought about checking my tire again, but I was parked up against the sidewalk curb, and it wasn't convenient, so I didn't. I went over to Country Mart, to get a new ticket out of their machine. Somebody was parked in my rightful space down at the end by the building's exit door, where I ENTER, so I had to park out in the middle part of the lot. When I came back out, I decided to look at the tire again. Finding that dime made me leery. I couldn't get that whole 9 POUNDS OF AIR thing out of my head, even though T-Hoe drove just fine to town, and didn't pull sideways in the least.

I walked behind the back of the car, because there was a light pole in a big yellow concrete barrier at the front. As I rounded T-Hoe's rear to look at the front passenger tire, I saw that T-Hoe's REAR passenger tire INDEED HAD 9 POUNDS OF AIR in it! That tire was FLAT! But only on the bottom, heh, heh!

Then I remembered that those sensors were messed up, and Hick didn't want to pay to fix them. Huh. Like HE's the one earning the money around here! Yep. Those sensors have been messed up since he bought two new tires and had the back ones moved to the front. When it says the back tires each have --- pounds of air in them, it's actually meaning the FRONT tires! And when it says the front tires, it actually means the REAR tires.

I hopped in T-Hoe and rushed two blocks over to the gas station chicken store to use their free air. Here's a picture of the rear tire, taken from beside the back bumper.

It was way flatter than this picture looks. I had a bad angle on it. It was FLAT, by cracky!

Here's the front one that was okay.

Of course the valve stem was near the bottom when I parked, and if that air hose was a snake, it would have bit me, because I couldn't find the end of it until I grabbed a loop and pulled hand over hand until I got to the metal air-shooter part. I stood almost on my head and pumped in A LOT of air. And then some more air. And started to put the hose back, but pumped in a little more air. Just to be safe. When I got back in T-Hoe, I saw that I now had exactly 38 pounds of air in THAT tire, too! Thanks, Even Steven.

I decided to scrap my trip to Bill-Paying Town. I could go to the closer Walmart. But I didn't WANT TO! I went to Casey's for one of the new $5 lottery tickets. Then to mail four bills. Then to the next town over. Where I noticed that I had lost a pound of air from that right rear tire in 15 minutes. I calculated my ETA at Bill-Paying Town Walmart, and then the time it would take to get home, and decided that I could make it there and back. There was another free air hose on the way in case I needed it on the way back.

Yep! Val threw caution to the wind! She pushed the envelope! And made it just fine.

Let the record show that two days later, Hick took T-Hoe to get the tire fixed. It only cost $10. AND he said that the tire-fixer told him all he needed to do was hold in the button thing on the dash to switch the tire sensors so they read the right tires. And that he did it for me.

Let the record further show that Hick said the tire-fixer only put 31 pounds in that tire to start with, so I might (yeah, that I might) want to put a little in. So when I was out in town the next day, I again stopped at the gas station chicken store and put in some air for the right rear tire.

Only to find out that when I checked T-Hoe's sensors, the sensors had NOT changed, and I now had 40 pounds of air in the right rear and 31 in the right front.

I really wish T-Hoe's tires would completely air themselves to the exact proper air pressure, like Hick tried to argue with me about A-Cad's tires!