I know that I have already written about driving over the police spikes about a month back, but I didn’t really complete the story because I didn’t know that there was more to that particular story. If you recall, Travis’ tires had a leak and Trent brought them to the tire shop the next day. The tire shop told him that the alignment and suspension were probably off and Trent needed to bring it to the dealer right away and stop driving on it. Travis said he couldn’t seem to get an appointment at the dealer, so he rotated the tires and thought he could use the car a little longer, but only to work and back. That week, I picked up Tessa from college, had Tayden’s prom, and had to go to Ball State for Taryn’s college graduation, so I thought maybe Travis could figure out how to get his car into the shop. I have to give him a nod though, because it took me 45 minutes on the phone with the dealer to get an appointment for his car. The online system kept kicking me out. At about 30 minutes into that phone call, the person told me she lost my info and we had to start over. Um, NO! She was quicker the next time, but told me that there were no slots left on the day I wanted. Ten minutes ago, she gave me endless appointment times at 15 minute intervals. I told her that there was no way all those slots could be taken because it takes WAY too long to make an appointment, so some must be available. Since that did not endear me to her, I was forced to ask for her supervisor to make an appointment. Anyway, more spots then opened up and at the 45 minute time mark, I had an appointment for Monday morning, which the kids would take the car to. The car was not driven that weekend. 

Monday morning came, and the girls were up to bring the car in, while I went to work. Oddly, Travis was at the Home Depot picking up something for the house and was planning to bring it home and work on it a bit before heading to the office. The girls left a few minutes before I left for work. As I drove down our street, at the same spot I sat with Bert and four flat tires six days earlier (but the opposite side of the street), sat Tessa with the Subaru and a flat tire. Seriously? So, I stop and we try to pump the tire with the pump that Travis keeps in his car because he had had low tires. This time, however, the tire is flat flat. It won’t hold air. Now I am frustrated because this whole process took way too long, and we shouldn’t have even been driving on these tires. I told poor Tessa to call her Dad and ask him what he wanted to do, because there were two tires with wear problems, and the car could potentially get another flat, and somehow that didn’t seem like a long shot the way things were going lately. I got in my car and called Taryn, who was ahead of Tessa on the way to the dealer, and told her to come back. I also said that they should call the dealer and adjust the appointment after talking to Travis (and good luck with that). 

When Travis got to Tessa, he decided to change the flat and bring the car directly to Tire Barn, which was WAY closer than the dealer, for four new tires. Of course, that didn’t address the underlying issues. We have proceeded to ignore the underlying issues for the past month. In fact, Travis said that he doesn’t want to deal with the dealer anyway, so I made an appointment with a shop that has taken care of our geriatric cars with much detail and fairness. This particular car isn’t a geriatric car, but we like that shop and it took me two minutes on the phone to make an appointment. Now we wait for the appointment date and hope that nothing else goes wrong. Cross your fingers everyone! Happy Humpday!