Good Morning shop dwellers! Here is the weather report:
Today is forecast to be COOLER than yesterday.
Today
High 90 | Low 59 °F
0% Chance of Precip.
Yesterday
High 95 | Low 56 °F
Precip. 0 in
Spousal Unit, the two fur buddies and I had an outing yesterday which turned an almost event into a non-event.
A quick background - Back in January, I think it was, that we went to Lake Arrowhead to attend a neice's wedding we managed to NOT load our garment bag into the automobile for our return trip. Said garment bag had out nicest clothes in it - going to say about $500 worth. We did not notice it missing until almost 6-7 weeks later when we needed the same again. Yesterday we decided to take a day trip and retrieve them, plus, I wanted to go on the weekend to see the train layout again that I posted about.
First of all, when we drove thru the "shopping" area, the model RR building had been converted into three shops - dammit! OK, "B Unit" goes into the hotel while I walk the dogs a little into the big trees and woods where they are having a ball smelling everything they can. Approaching the car to give them some water, I look at the right front tire as the wheels were turned sharply to the right when parking. It was totally bald with wire poking out on the inside of the tire. Now, I have run lots of tires with not hardly any tread, but this was enough to SCARE THE CRAP OUTTA ME - especially with the 7000 foot narrow, curving mountainous road that we had just climbed and faced going back down - not to mention the fact that we were doing 70-75 on the freeway with that tire!
OK, what to do? Nothing open Sunday for getting a tire around there so called AAA to change the spare (figured that we are paying for their service and have hardly ever used it except for 2-3 times over 26 years) and found out that it would be a couple hours before they could get to us, so I told the Mrs. that we would drive down the mountain and stop at the first tire shop we could find. I just really did not want to crawl under the car trying to get the spare out and it was NOT a full size tire anyway. OK, down the hill we go at 30-40 mph pulling over many times to let the "race car drivers" go around ever time I would see 4-6 cars behind me. Only once did we get honked at and waved at with the middle finger. Wife was on her phone (damn, Apple makes a good product) searching for a tire shop open on Sunday afternoon that was close. She found one along Foothill Blvd, HA, which could not have been in a worse section of town. I would not want to be caught there after dark, and really did not want to be there in broad daylight. I think there is 1-2 shootings a week there. (way to go hon!) OK, the place we were looking was not open and not the place we wanted anyway, but I spotted a "used tires" place on the opposite side of the street that had a group of Spanish Americans around itand I told the wife I was going to get them to put the spare on the ground - she was afraid to stop, but I convienced that it would be OK. They were quite busy and only one guy spoke english well - the others pretty hard to converse with. It was an older man and his three sons business and they were busy. I mentioned that they seemed busy and was told, "Yeah, that's because we are open .. being Sunday". Took a little while for them to get to us, but after looking at the spare, the man said, " How about we just put on a decent used tire?". I looked at what he offered, and decided to go with it. $45 later we were on our way with a tire that actually will last longer than the other three which are on the ground. I probably could have "bargined" him down on that tire some, but with it being as hot as it was and him and his sons working as hard as they were - there was no way that I was going to try and talk him down. Besides, with what we were driving on, if I were a rich man - I would have given him a hundred dollar tip rather than the extra $5 that I did!
Have to get the alinement checked today ... there is no way that that tire should have worn that way!