The Great Tire Saga, Part One

Ok, well we drove straight home from Assembly Sunday night, even though it was late, because it's only a 2 hour drive. We pulled in the driveway about 12:30 am. As Brad pulled in, he side swiped the trash can that was sitting at the curb, and when I opened my car door, we heard a loud hissing noise. But we were tired so we figured we'd just figure it out in the morning.

Well the next morning Brad was going to go run some errands but discovered we had a flat tire. There's some pretty bad sidewall damage. There is nothing in the driveway that could have done this, and though he sideswiped the trash can that shouldn't have done it unless there was something in the tire already and the trash can just pushed it in all the way, but we couldn't find a thing. At any rate, it's a blessing that it happened as we were pulling into the driveway and not while going 70 mph down the interstate!

Of course everyone was closed due to Monday being a holiday, except for Wal-Mart. And they don't carry our size tire AT ALL, apparently it's an unusual size, and it would take them a week to special order it and get it in. I called EVERY Wal-Mart in the Nashville area and they all said the same thing. Grrr.

So I searched online Tuesday for the size tire we needed and it turns out like only TWO companies make that size tire. Goodyear seemed the cheapest (but still cost about $100 total... thankfully someone at Assembly blessed us with just the amount we needed, you know who you are! God provided for our need before we knew we needed it!). So I called the closest actual Goodyear dealer and they were only $3 over what it would have cost to have Wal-Mart special order it, PLUS they actually had the tire in stock! Imagine that!

So I went over there and had them put the new tire on. When I paid, I asked if they just put the other tire in the back cargo area. They said, "What tire?" The one that was on the right rear that you took off to put the new tire on (duh.).
"Oh, you wanted that?" Yes, that's our spare! "Oh ok, dude, put that tire in the back for her." Ok, thanks.

Later that day, I look in the back of the car, and do you know what they did? Instead of taking the flat out of the back of the car and putting the new tire on that rim, they took the spare off, put the new tire on the spare rim, and when I said that I wanted to keep the spare, they tossed the tire in the back on top of the flat WITHOUT a rim. Excuse me, but how am I supposed to USE my spare if it doesn't have a rim on it?!?

Sigh. I couldn't do anything about it until Wednesday. And I really didn't want to go back there and cause waves, so I decided to just go to Wal-Mart and have them do it, plus we needed an oil change anyway.

So after my ultrasound appt. Wednesday (which I will blog about later), I went back to Lebanon Wal-Mart. They told me it would be a 1 1/2 hr wait for the oil change, and a 3 hr wait for the tire. Yikes! But I thought, well, it needs to be done anyway and I can easily spend 3 hrs in Wal-Mart... yeah right.

So I wandered around for awhile, then headed to the book section to sit on the bench and read (and I didn't even fall asleep this time!). I read half of Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, kind of a retelling of the Book of Hosea around the turn of the century thereabouts. The book of Hosea is one of the most moving books of the Bible, in my opinion, and has always been a favorite of mine. Look it up and read it, those who haven't. I guarantee you won't regret it.

Anyway, now I'll have to go hang out in Wal-Mart again and finish the book! I just couldn't sit on that bench any longer, so I put it back on the shelf and wandered around a bit more, then went to eat lunch at the McDonald's in there. Three hours had passed and they STILL hadn't paged me. So I went to go see what the deal was.

To be continued...