Welcome back my friends, to the serenade of the world's tiniest violin! Do you have any sympathy for me yet? For T-Hoe's 8 POUND tire? It's taking on a life of its own. That tire needs its own MySpace Facebook LinkedIn Pinterest Twitter TikTok Instagram account. Or whatever's all the rage these days.
It had 32 POUNDS of pressure on Friday, after Thursday's repair. That's driveable. But the other tires had 35-36. I want all my tires to be the same. Like dressing your triplets in striped Freddy Krueger shirts.
Of course T-Hoe has FOUR tires. I'm a realist. How many of my readers have had quadruplets? See? So maybe they HAVEN'T all had triplets. But I bet they know a set. In all my years of teaching, I never had quadruplets. But I had triplets. Anyhoo... I'd like all my tires to be the same.
I tried to remedy the matter on Friday. I pulled up to the Gas Station Chicken Store's air hose. Never mind that sign they have on the building.
No. I don't buy my gas there. Too confusing with juggling my correct change 44 oz Diet Coke and cashing in scratchers. But since I'm there every day, I'm sure they wouldn't mind me partaking of the FREE AIR, seeing as how I'm a regular. No doubt they make more profit off that daily soda than off a once a week half tank of gas.
I saw right away that the ne'er-do-well who used FREE AIR ahead of me had not coiled the orange air hose sweetly on the rack. I kind of doubt they got gas, or paid a dollar for the FREE AIR, either. Anyhoo... I stepped out of T-Hoe and walked around his rear to take the cap off that tire valve. WHAT IN THE NOT-HEAVEN???
There was no cap on T-Hoe's tire valve!
I might have been rassen-frassen a bit, as I picked up the FREE AIR hose and pulled it over to T-Hoe's tire. WHAT IN THE NOT-HEAVEN???
There was no round ball thingy with a pointy stem inside it, that makes the inside air WHOOSH out of the tire as you jam it on the valve!
The metal end of the FREE AIR hose was just a round circle. I could put my finger through it. It looked like the socket end of a combination wrench. Huh. I guess the ne'er-do-well ahead of me had helped himself to the business end of that FREE AIR hose.
A man got out of a truck parked in the handicap space in front of T-Hoe, and said,
"Do you need some help with that?"
"No. It's broken! A part is missing. And I just got my tire fixed, so it shouldn't need air anyway, and they KEPT THE CAP OFF THE VALVE STEM! I'm kind of having a bad day. But THANK YOU for offering to help."
So I went back home (after magical elixir and LOSING scratchers), and parked T-Hoe in the garage. On Saturday, the pressure in my repaired tire was 31 POUNDS. Another pound down. Lucky for me, the Gas Station Chicken Store had thrown good money after bad:
There was a new nozzle on the end of that FREE AIR hose! I still didn't have a valve stem cap. Which I pointedly pointed out to Hick later, he having pooh-poohed my chagrin over it, saying that he had a bunch of them over in the BARn.
"I put more air in my repaired tire. It was easy, because the Gas Station Chicken Store had a new nozzle, and I DIDN'T HAVE TO SCREW THE VALVE STEM CAP OFF AND ON!"
I don't think my attempt at shaming had much effect. Hick is pretty much shameless, shame-free, unshameable.
Anyhoo... when I checked the sensor readout afterwards, both my rear tires [REALLY! The REAR tires!] showed 40 POUNDS of air, after driving in the 90-degree heat. We'll see what my repaired tire shows on Sunday.
I'm hoping for 35-36 POUNDS... like the other three remaining quadruplets.
Portable air compressor plugs into aux, from $29.95. They work pretty well. Can't believe Hick does not have one.
ReplyDeleteThe Pony has one! I gave it to him for Christmas. Of course, it does me no good when it's in The Pony's car, parked over in Sis-Town while he's at work.
DeleteHick has a giant compressor in the BARn, which he got by trading something with our old across-the-road neighbor. Then he has what I think of as "a little jug of air" which is something I think he fills with air from the big compressor to carry around for a lawnmower or Gator tire.
Hick likes big gadgets and self-made gadgets. This portable compressor is not his style. But I WILL recommend that he get one before heading out west to visit his brother in Vegas later this summer. Can't have him sitting in the desert with a flat tire, waiting on a tow, or putting on a donut. Thevictorians are rough on tires.
I wonder if the valve cap really is necessary, many people around here seem to ride bicycles without them. I do know that when I pumped my bike tyres, the valve caps wouldn't screw back on, so I left them off and the tyres kept going down. Doesn't matter anymore now because that flat tyre bike is in the shed and the rubber of the tyres is all dry and cracked. I have never known a set of triplets and only two sets of twins my whole life. One set was new brothers to a classmate in grade six and the other set was baby brothers I day-minded once, and found they had horrific ulcerated nappy rash, so I changed them more often all day with liberal amounts of nappy cream applied. I left the tube of nappy cream in their bag as a hint to the mum.
ReplyDeleteThe valve cap doesn't hold in the air, I think. But I drive so much on gravel that it will keep little particles from getting stuck down in there by the little pointy stem thingy and possibly hinder future inflation.
DeleteOf course, I've had 100 students per day over 28 years, so that's a sample of 2,800 kids to find twins and triplets in. I'm glad you left the cream to treat the rash! At least I never had to do that with "my" twins.
My cousin has identical twin boys. When they were toddlers, my grandma would babysit them during the day. They were WILD! She'd reach out and stop one running through the house, and say, "Which one are YOU?" before having a talking-to about their behavior. When they got a little older, they had belts with their name. Problem solved. At least the ID problem, before they were old enough to think of wearing each other's belt.