Tires

     Car tires have been much on my mind of late.  When I bought my current RX350 in 2019, the tires were well-worn.  It may even have been a bargaining point, "I'm going to have to replace these, you know...."

     Reader, I don't drive that much and while I was paying cash,* I was nowhere near so flush that I was going to be able to replace the tires right away.  I put it off and put it off, and really, were they that bad?  Then the pandemic arrived and I had other things to think about.  Meanwhile, the tires developed a few sidewall bulges.  The left front started a slow leak that required at least weekly topping up, and the rest had slower ones.  It was getting a little skatey on winter streets, but caution and anti-lock brakes cover a multitude of traction sins.  The tires now featured a certain absence of treads at the edges. 

     But I was coping.  Last weekend, I let the car sit for two days and drove to work Monday without a full preflight inspection, thinking the handling was a little mushy.  I walked out at the end of the day to find the right rear very low.  It measured at 5 psi.

     I texted Tam that my trip home might be dicey, babied my car over to my employer's very useful air hose, aired up the tire and listened for signs of leakage.  Nothing.  I checked the pressure at five-minute intervals, and when it was still stable after the third try, headed for home.

     Online, it didn't take a lot of looking to find replacement tires.  Of course, the car is a Lexus, and even at seventeen years old, a lot of the choices are...spendy.  Modern versions of what was already on it (Yokohama all-season something-or-others) were not direly painful, and that set had gone a lot of miles, so I found who had them in stock.  Nobody close, but one wasn't too far away from the North Campus.  I kept watch on the leaky tire, and got new tires a few days ago.

     It took time.  The tire place was busy -- I guess a lot of people had put off getting new tires, or maybe the onset of cooler weather had reminded them that slick roads were coming.  But the work was well-organized, and an hour and a half after I had arrived, a mechanic drove my car out of the bay and turned it towards where I was waiting outside the store lobby.

     The new tires squeaked.

     I laughed out loud and was still grinning when the guy stopped and got out.  He gave me an inquiring look.

     "Those tires squeak," I told him, "just like brand new sneakers!"

     He laughed, too.  "You're right, they sure do."

     I'd put the bill on my credit card, just under a week's net pay with the warranty.  We used to say new shoes squeaked until you paid them off,† but I swear I'll start running the card bill down ASAP.
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* Paying cash, even with a nice insurance settlement -- when my previous Lexus got totalled, the settlement was $90 more than I paid for the car a few years earlier -- there's not a lot left over and I give up luxuries like bacon for a while afterward.
 
† Yes, younger readers, for some of us, once upon a time, good Sunday shoes took time payments to afford.  They'd be bought a little large, so you could "grow into them."  And you had to be careful with them, too, no skipping through mud puddles or like that.