Tire update

Yesterday I had a major "girl power" day, because I solved my tire problem (almost) all by myself.

I called around several places to find out if they had my tire in stock. Here's what I found out:

• My tire model is extra-special because it is really hard to find, and my car is the only model that currently ships with it.


• It is also one of the most expensive tires you can buy for that size.


• Nobody stocks it.


• Sears wasn't all that helpful (one Sears I called never even answered the phone, which I thought was sort of pathetic). NOTE: If I ever apply for a job at Sears, I am going to edit this part out.


• I'm now a big fan of National Tire & Battery (NTB).

The NTB guy I talked to, Chris, was extremely helpful. (And, in person, he turned out to be very cute.) I liked NTB because, even though I walked in ready to drop $300 on ONE tire, they said they really wanted to try to fix the other one first. And they did! They were able to fix it for $30. So that's one less zero than I thought I was going to have to spend. They promised me numerous times that my tire would not blow up and they said the repair would last the life of the tire.

They also showed me what was in my tire. I asked if I could keep it because I just had to be able to show people:

It's not a super-great photo, because I took it with my phone, but you can still tell that was a seriously big spike of something that was in my tire. No wonder it went flat.

But I took care of it on my own! Hooray for me!