Yesterday I found my car with two flat tires. The left rear had a slow leak for months, which required re-filling every 4-5 days. I knew it needed to be looked at. My front right tire was flat in my garage when I came out to drive it. I wasn't sure the reason but I knew I had to get to a tire store to get them both repaired. I had probably enough time after refilling to the tire to reach the store.
I used the Yelp app and found a local store which said they repaired tires as a free service. Good deal! I got to the tire store and the service guy found a screw in the front tire (there's a lot of construction in Austin) and he thought that'd be no problem. When he looked at the slow leak, he said this could be a problem.
He took me in the office and said if they found any "safety issue" with a tire they would not remount the old tire. I told him I didn't have the $200+ to buy a new Michelin climate tire (which works very well in the kind of rain Austin gets - its a "sticky" tire when it comes to traction).
The first tire was fixed. Then he wheeled in the 2nd tire which had been patched before, 2 1/2 years earlier in Marble Falls just before I left the Hill Country of Texas. the patch was on the corner from where the tire goes from the tread to the side wall, and the heat and the recent chilly weather had worked it loose. They would not rematch it nor remount it. Perhaps it was a liability issue, or just sales technique but I was not happy. If that patch held for 30 months, a new patch would last longer than I'll have this car. The car is getting old and has high mileage. I told the sales guy I need the tire to take to Costco for any possible warranty I may have on it.
The sales guy left, had the technician mount a used radial they had just taken off another car, which had considerable tread left. I was given the okay to take the car.
I was driving on Highway 620 to pick up my first passenger of the night, and it dawned on me, that I was choosing to be grumpy about this tire situation but I just had a rather surprising set of circumstances happen. I got my tires fixed enough to continue working. And it was done for free! It ain't pretty (different brand), but it gives me time to get the tire I should have on there. As that thought crossed my mind some driver in a truck starts beeping his horn like it was stuck on autorepeat. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I thought of the horn noise more an exclamation mark on the insight I just had. The universe is holographic and the driver himself probably doesn't know why he did that. But I did.
We swim in a sea of consciousness and we are ourselves are that consciousness. Shakespeare said "To be or not to be", but he could have easily said "to smile or not to smile"...
