Sunday Morning Musings: On a rainy Saturday morning, I’m typing this as I sit in Discount Tire, alongside of my fellow Grovites, with each of us undoubtedly facing more than our fair share of tire troubles. I think perhaps this is why there seems to be so many used tire shops in Pleasant Grove, the craziest things just seem to befall us poor working stiffs when it comes to our tires. I know many of you have the luxury of driving on over a thousand bucks worth of Michelins, but some of us in the ‘hood are relegated to driving on what essentially amounts to tightly wound rubber bands, spray painted black by indentured servants in Chinese sweatshops (with no offense intended toward any of my Chinese friends of course). With that being the case, our tires seem to be punctured fairly easily, by such sharp objects as a Kleenex, after some Grovite threw their tissue out the window, not giving any thought to the fact that they just gave the poor bloak behind them a flat tire. I took the exit to my house on Thursday afternoon, and when approaching the redlight, I heard a loud puncture sound on my right rear tire. It was a curious sound, a little louder than just a nail or screw entering the tire. I was one block from the house, so I wanted to try making it to my driveway. It was not my imagination that the sound was a little louder, as something really weird happened to my tire this go round, something that has never happened to me in all my years of tire mayhem. More on that oddity in a moment. Usually when experiencing these joys of tire malfunctions, I just go to Leal’s used tire shop on Buckner Boulevard at Elam Road, and let them put their air impact wrench on my lug nuts (somehow, saying “they put their wrench on my nuts” just sounds wrong). When going to Leal’s, there’s no getting my hands dirty, they put on a quick patch, I’m in and out in five minutes, I’ve been through this routine thousands of times (only a slight embellishment). But this time, rather than risk not making it to Leal’s, I pulled onto my street, hoping to be able to take a look at it under the shade tree overhanging my driveway. As soon as I turned on the street, the tire was already going flat, and I could hear some sort of metal clanging sound. I have sport wheels on my little Ford Focus, so with no wheel covers that could come loose, I was a little perplexed as to what in the world I was hearing. It was a hot and humid afternoon, I was a little tired from the workday, and although on Wednesday afternoon, after running over the hills at Cedar Ridge Nature preserve, I had bragged in a status update about how “old man still got game”, the truth of the matter was, my lower lumbar was hurting, and it was for the very reason that I was feeling my oats at Cedar Ridge, and overexerted myself on that nature run. I say that to say, when contemplating that I would have to kneel on my concrete driveway on a hot afternoon, and take a tire wrench to loosen lug nuts that had previously been tightened with air impact wrenches, the thought of that did not exactly warm the cockles of my heart. But as I said, I’ve been through this routine many times in my life, so I’ve been battle tested, hardened by these little challenges life throws at us. Rather than give in to a case of “I don’t want to deal with this”, I went into the house, let Missy and Coco out, giving them their afternoon feeding, then after putting my big boy panties on, I walked my tired old lumbar out to do tire battle! In four years of having the car, this was the first time I had even pulled the little donut tire out of the trunk. Word to the wise, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to periodically check the air pressure in your spare tire. My small spare tire which is supposed to have 60 PSI in it, when I put it on the ground, then lowered the jack to put the weight of the car on the tire, it gave me that sinking feeling, wondering if the spare would have enough air to drive the car to Leal’s. Though driveable, the spare only had 11 pounds of pressure in it, not the required 60 pounds. So back to that mysterious little clanging noise I heard. When I took the tire off, expecting to see a nail or something in it, what I saw was some sort of tear about three quarters of an inch wide, with the rubber folded into the tire. When turning the tire, I could hear something metal rolling inside, clanging off of the wheel. My first impulse was to think WTF? The employee at Leal’s confirmed what I suspected, this tire could not be patched, and I was now in the market to purchase a couple of new radials for the car. I asked him to take the tire off the rim, as I wanted to see what that was inside the tire that caused the flat. As I mentioned, never in my life have I encountered something this strange in any of my tire episodes, but what we discovered had penetrated the tire completely, and still rolling loose inside the tire, was one of those wheel balancing weights, the kind that they hammer onto a rim when spin balancing your tire. Except this one was bigger than what I had seen, perhaps used on larger vehicles or diesel trucks? There’s only one sharp piece on these wheel weights, with that being the middle part that hammers closed onto your rim. Oddly enough, when I ran over that, the sharp portion of that weight penetrated my tightly wound rubber band tire, and it sucked the weight right up into the inside of the tire. Strange indeed, but if there’s some new way of creating a tire issue, I’m convinced that I will somehow be randomly selected by the flat tire gods, to be the guinea pig that gets to test out the latest new method of throwing humans tire curveballs. Here’s the best part of this story though. After bending over and putting a torque on my lower lumbar, while taking that tire wrench to loosen those tightened lug nuts, and after picking the dirty tire and wheel up to put it in my trunk, as I walked toward the house, with grime on my forearms and hands, just as I approached the steps to the front porch, a very large and lovely Monarch butterfly flew in front of my chest, stopping me in my tracks, as it then took several seconds to hover before me. I had just mentioned last weekend that butterflies are almost an apparition to me, and depending upon the circumstance of them appearing, for me at least, their gentle presence and fluttering colorful wings can border upon being mystical, spiritual, even holy. And at that very moment, when I could use a gentle reminder that there is someone who is aware of where I am in life, a lovely Monarch fluttered her silent wings, as if to whisper hello. Have a great weekend my friends!
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 01:53:40 +0000
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