I stayed at my parent’s on Monday night. I hadn’t seen them for a while (since Christmas) and they are 200+ miles closer to our meeting-up-place. I left after wrapping up work for the day and got there around 11pm. We talked for a while and then I headed off to bed as I had a long day on Tuesday. Got up just before the iphone was going to wake me up, had a quick bite for breakfast and filled my coffee mug. It was in the mid-thirties and very foggy, so I needed to get moving as I had 250+ miles to drive.
As I got closer to the Ohio border, the visibility was deteriorating and the temperature was dropping. I started seeing ice on the windshield and the temperature was 27 degrees. Still dark outside, but signs of life from the sun are beginning to appear. The sun warmed things up a bit, enough to eliminate the ice from the windshield but not enough to improve visibility very much.
I passed through Akron and was about 10 miles east of town when I heard a pop and the truck was weaving slightly left to right. Thinking that the trailer had a puncture, I stopped and found that the puncture was the passenger-side rear tire on the truck. Crap. Well, I was ahead of schedule and changing the tire should only take 10 minutes or so. Ha, I wish.
Loosening the lugs, jacking it up, and removing the flat tire was easy. Looking at the spare tire nestled up under the bed, I thought that the hard part was over. Wrong. I could not get that spare tire carrier to lower the spare – would not budge. I decided to think about it for a minute, as if the thought process would loosen the corroded cable/drum mechanism. Well, as you can guess I’m not telekinetic.
So I got on the phone to find a Ford dealer that could help. Trust me when I tell you that the dealers I spoke with were not very interested in helping. Note that I said dealers (plural). Great.
Next was to call Goodyear tire dealerships; I am 10 miles down the road from the world headquarters of Goodyear, after all. Here’s a quote from the first dealer I spoke with “We don’t work on tires.” Really. I asked what those round, black, rubber things were in the showroom and then he said “I didn’t mean that – I meant that we only work on tires HERE. Not on the road.” Really. So as long as I get a flat tire in a Goodyear dealership parking lot I’m covered, but if I get a flat on the road, I’m screwed. I’ll have to remember that when I buy tires again.
Stay tuned…