airless (a twice on friday bit)

since i did a repeat bit on wednesday to celebrate the 20th anniversary, and there was no perfectly aged bit for today, i decided to do a rare thing and drop new shit on a friday!

sunday morning kinda sucked…at least the earlier hours of it.

last saturday was a motherfucker of a day at the shop. like probably $12K gross kinda day. and all through it we had just installed new POS software i was still learning, so compared to my usual pace i was sluggish, which with that kinda volume really sucks. on the upside, i pretty well know that software frontwards and back now.

so i go to leave and my tire looks low. this wasn’t surprising to me. i have a rim that got bent due to shitty highway construction and i’d taken it to a place to get corrected, but they didn’t correct it all the way, so a few potholes later it was now worse than it had been. the other day i got detoured onto some shitty country roads and that sealed its fate – it no longer held air for more than a day or two.

while i had inflated it with my portable air compressor on saturday morning, i’d noticed it looked super low when i went out. unfortunately, so was the battery on my compressor when i’d put it back in the trunk and i’d forgotten to fully shut it off, so it showed zero percent on the battery.

not good.

so i decided to take off in the hopes that MAYBE there was enough air to not be a thing. not the case. had to u-turn within a hundred feet of the shop and go back to the shell across the street who’s air machine turned out to be broken. rather than try the two slightly hoodish convenience stores a block or two down from there, i went over half a mile up the road to a shiny 7-11…with a broken air machine. i then went another hundred yards AGAINST TRAFFIC to a different 7-11 who, finally did not have an air machine labeled “OUT OF ORDER”.

i went in, got some snacks, then waited in line behind a pack of hood clientele to buy my shit and get quarters. on my way out the other clerk asked, “i thought the air machine only worked on card?” but her co-worker said, “i don’t think so…” so i kept walking and fed in two bucks in quarters for nothing. i then tapped a card and it instantly fired up. i set the pressure to 36, grabbed the hose, and found NO FUCKING AIR NOZZLE, just an empty hose end spitting out air.

frustrated i stormed back in and told them, yes, it only works with card, but without a nozzle it does you no good. to their credit, they at least gave me the two bucks back they’d changed to quarters. i then got in the car and started the mile down the road to the other convenience stores. the first had an “OUT OF ORDER” sign but DID have the nozzle with a pressure gauge, so i tapped my card and it roared to life. i put the nozzle on the tire and the pressure gauge shot up to 20 PSI.

“thank god it ain’t as flat as it looks”, i thought. i kept pumping and checking, and the gauge was going up. 25…31…43…50…what the fuck?

meanwhile the tire didn’t look ANY different.

realizing it wasn’t doing shit, i noticed across the street, at the closed chevron, they had an air machine. i rolled over there, then walked BACK across the street to the mobil i’d just been at and had to change the two bucks back to quarters (that one didn’t do card) and when i got it fired up and started i could air rushing out of the back – the car weight had the bead pushed out enough to not hold air.

super. so i called the ufc at 12:51 in the morning to come get me and drove back to the shop. after an hour of trying, and five different stores, it was time to admit defeat. i cleaned up the shop for the hour it took her to arrive so i didn’t have to be in too early the next morning. she dropped me off again eight hours later with one of my jacks and my full size spare.

so as of now (written on tuesday) the rim is at “wheel technologies” getting RE-fixed (hopefully properly this time) and i should be able to pick it up wednesday morning in time to head down to SA for tool.

second airless part

as of yesterday (when i got the text, which was actually monday) the original audience of one for this site, ME, is still on a ventilator in oklafuckinhoma entering week four of her (unvaccinated) battle with covid. stop believing the disinformation dozen and get your shots, folks. they’re bullshitting you, and this kind of thing is what happens when you believe their lies.

(to show who’s site you’re reading “oklafuckinhoma” does NOT trigger a spellcheck red squiggle, where as “oklahoma” does!)