Ain't It A Crying Shame

If you know anything about me you know that my car is having trouble with its tires. So I thought you might like to know a bit about my car. It's been having trouble with it tires.

It's for once not the usual mysterious problem where my right front tire is leaking for no reason. In this case, my right front tire was completely flat. But for a good reason. There was a screw impaled into it. I had first thought it was just another mysterious, possibly weather-related, flat and tried filling it up again. And the tire just made this terrible wet hissing sound until it flattened out again.

Without bragging, I'd like to note I was able to put the spare tire on myself, successfully. This is a rare instance where I was able to change the tire without some fiasco developing. The Discount Tire where I bought the tires was able and willing to repair the tire. But they were jammed full with people getting their snow tires put on. They offered that if I just left the tire for repair, and arranged to put it on myself, then they'd probably be able to get that fixed sooner than if I waited for them to put the tire on. This is because they've only got so many repair bays, and a car that needs one takes up a bunch of time. Just patching a tire could be done anytime they have free staff. So I went with that.

And then had a bit of nerves about putting the tire back on myself. I shouldn't, but I got to thinking, well, shouldn't a professional put the lug nuts on so I know they're secured correctly and balanced right and there's no irritating tire problems when I'm going 70 mph somewhere that's 90 minutes from home?

Fortunately (?) right at this time I discovered my right front headlight was out. So I brought the car to my dealer's, who was able to put a new headlight in, put the tire back on, and give the car a good wash while I hung out in their waiting room eating their bagels. And the car's back in good working order.

Yeah so Tuesday I went to bring water samples to Preuss for checking and the car wouldn't turn over. I hooked the battery up to a charger and it rose from a middling partial charge to full over the course of lunch, and started up all right after that. I don't know if it's the sudden cold snap. Or if maybe I had left a light on somehow. My car turns off the lights when I turn the car off, normally. So I just leave the headlight switch in the 'on' position. But I did once catch a light not turning off. And this time I don't think one was left on. But I might not have noticed either. So I think I am going to have to be careful about turning the lights to off, at least until I forget about this and go back to my slovenly ways. Also I should probably get one of those emergency-jump-start batteries for my ever-growing set of stuff that's in the car Just In Case.

Trivia: The Fairlane 500 Skyliner, introduced by Ford in 1957, offered a retracting hard-top convertible roof. It cost $400 more than the conventional cloth-top convertible model, and little available trunk space. Source: Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design, Henry Petroski.

Currently Reading: Spies and Shuttles: NASA's Secret Relationship with the DoD and CIA, James E David.

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PS: Hanging around Kennywood, 2017:

Water spilling out of the Log Jammer track, including a hole at the base that JTV joked was not at all an alarming sign of age and ill repair.

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Great explosion of mist as one log flume car splashes down and another, foreground, approaches the station.

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The waves overflowing the trough, herald of a Log Jammer car coming to the station.

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