I Got Screwed

No, not in a good way . . . nor was it in a particularly bad way either. I didn’t do my taxes and find out that I owe the government thousands and thousands of dollars. (I did my taxes on the weekend and found out that I am getting $32.00 back, but I can’t file online just yet). I am not sure exactly when it happened, but apparently it happened a few weeks back. 

I am of course referring to the slow leek in my truck tire. I have been pumping it up and avoiding taking it in to be looked at. I just didn’t want the expense or being told that I was putting too much weight on these tires and had to buy special tires to take the weight. 

So there I was, pumping up that tire last night when I saw it . . . heard it really. I heard that little hiss, mixed with a slight gurgle. I looked and there I saw the offending outcropping . . . a metal item of some sort sticking out of the tire, in amongst the threads. It was hissing and the water in the tread was bubbling as the air was slowly leaking out of the tire.

I did consider saying to heck with it and just let it go, ignore it and deal with it another day, but I knew that was a mistake. I knew that come morning that tire would be not just flat but completely dead. I knew that I had to deal with the tire that evening, as in immediately. So with a groan I was off to a local tire shop to spend more money I didn’t want to spend.

When I got there I was told (naturally) that I would have to disconnect Wanda in order to get the tire fixed. Okay, so far so good, I have done this many times before. Well, then there was that padlock, the one which locks the trailer onto the ball of the hitch, that one which had rusted closed.

I tried to use the key but the lock wouldn’t budge. Then I tried to use my hacksaw, nope. I’m not sure if it was due to the hardness of metal of the lock, or that hacksaws are useless in this case or the fact that my hacksaw was just a piece of crap. In the end all that my efforts with the hacksaw did was do little more than polish the metal. Thankfully a guy from the tireshop came out with a pair of bolt cutters and that lock was toast.

The tire itself was just $35.00 to fix, and all in all it wasn’t as bad as I feared. The weather last night was warm too, so at least I wasn’t doing this in -30C and blowing snow. As I was paying for the tire repair they told me that the item which was in the tire was a screw.