For want of a nail...

... the Tire Gods decided to try a new method of flattening my tires.

This is the sight that greeted me this afternoon when I took my recyclables out to dump them in the blue bin. That tire is one of the brand new ones I just had installed exactly one week ago. The left front one, to be precise. To say that I was not happy would be the most flagrant understatement of the year.

After I got done cussing — for the moment, anyway — I dug out my AARP motor club card and dialed up their 800 number. The fact that the car was sitting in my own driveway didn't mean I was about to change the tire myself. I'm paying around $50 a year for roadside service precisely so I don't have to change tires. Anyway, the nice young man at the call center (which, judging from his accent, was probably somewhere on the Indian subcontinent), rounded up one of the local services (fortunately, not on the Indian subcontinent) that does things like getting people into cars that they've locked their keys inside and changing flats, and a half hour or so later another nice young man arrived and set about replacing that brand new and extremely flat tire with the pathetic excuse for a spare that carmakers supply with $20,000 cars these days.

As soon as he had departed I got on the phone to the tire dealer where I bought the tires last week and told them that one of those tires was extremely flat and could I just bring in it right now? Which I did, and when they got to it about an hour later, it turns out that it wasn't a nail this time; how about a chunk of glass in the sidewall instead? I now have another brand new tire on my left front wheel. I wonder how long this one will last before it finds something sharp to impale itself on?

I learned two things today. First, the $10 per tire for the road hazard coverage is well worth the price, at least if you drive in South Hampton Roads. And second, if you're going to get a flat tire, it's a heckuva lot more convenient to have it go flat in your own driveway than out on the road somewhere. At least you have ready access to a bathroom, refrigerator, and reading material while you're waiting for the road service guy to show up.