Trip glitch

We made our trip to Mississippi on Saturday, but not before we had a major delay. See, I didn't have a good spare tire for my truck. So, instead of waiting for the local Always Save tire shop to open, we headed out and stopped at one near our Capital City - in the little town where I used to be a store manager. We got there at 7 AM, just as the doors were opening. We were second in line and they got to us right away. Well, sort of.

Not only did they take every bit of information about the truck and put it in their computer, they also needed our zip code, phone number, age, and other information. I began to wonder if they were going to ask for a strand of DNA before they'd work on my tire! I could have probably entered a high security government facility with less hassle than I found at their tire shop!

Anyway, it turned out that my old spare could not be repaired and I'd have to buy a tire. First, they said the only one they had to fit my Explorer would wind up being $114 by the time they got done. Hello? I walked around and found two tires that would amount to about the same price and approached the counter about them. The fellow said they weren't allowed to go more than 5% smaller on tires, and these were 9.2% smaller. But, he did have one that was in the percentage range they were allowed to use, and it was lower in price than the original one.

Given the situation - not in our home town and on our way to another state - we bought the tire and had them put it on. Let me tell you, though, that will never happen again. I'll go back to my regular tire guy (like I should have done this time) and buy tires that will work even though they aren't perfectly the same size as what the Always Save said we must put on.

In fact, we'll probably get a couple more tires Monday and have those put on. It's getting to be hot weather and tires will pop on the hot asphalt if they don't have good tread. Better safe than sorry!

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