A story about my tire

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date and not representative. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

After work, I went to my car with the full expectation that I was going to hop into it and drive home. Alas, such was not the case! There was this bulge in the sidewall of my front driver-side tire. The bulge was the size of Kansas, so I thought it prudent not to drive on it. I look in my trunk and notice my spare is flat (again). It has this really really slow leak that totally stumps the people I've brought it to twice to get it fixed. Anyhow, so I bring it all across the street where we have a most convenient gas station with an air hose. But the air hose is broken. I toss things around and decide it'll be ok to drive a mile and a half down the road to the next gas station. They have an air hose and it works. So I pull out all the gear, jack up the car, pull all the bolts off, and when I try to pull the wheel off, it doesn't budge.

At this point, I'm really stuck. There's no way I'm going to get this wheel off the car. I called AAA and they came down and this HUGE MAN pops my wheel off as if he was popping off the head of a dandelion. Then we filled my slow-leak spare and he informed me that a tire that looked like mine did (it had a bulge on one side the size of Kansas and the other side had lots of cracks) was definitely not fit to drive on. Furthermore, he added I should get it replaced for free because tires shouldn't degrade like that with such little usage. Then the HUGE MAN hopped into his truck and drove off.

I know nothing about tires. I think I could go to the dealership (I bought the car in CA and I'm in MA now) nearby, but I really hate doing that mostly because I just hate interacting with the people at the dealership. I think I'll just have to buy a new tire. Blech.

And that's the end of the story where I found myself in a situation which I had no hope of solving and I called AAA and they came to rescue me.

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