If you aren’t already aware of my ongoing battle with my car’s tires, then read the following previous posts: My Troubles with Tires (Part I) and My Trouble with Tires (Part II).

So, after replacing literally every one of my car’s four tires, the cruel hand of fate decided to play yet another tire joke on yours truly…

It was a Friday afternoon.  I had worked all day, and was looking forward to going home.  My coworkers and I left the building at 5pm.  But then, as I approached my car, I noticed the driver’s-side rear tire looked a little low.  At first, I thought it was a trick of some kind, a mirage, a product of my imaginative faculties.  Surely, the air in the tire was just a little low!  Certainly I didn’t have yet another flat tire!

But, my friends, the tire was flat.  There was no way I could drive on it.  I shook my head, incredulous.  I turned around and walked toward my coworker D___.  Guess what? I said, and I told her I had a flat.  She, being privy to this blog and my other tire woes, was in disbelief.  Then my boss L___ approached.  I told her, yes, I have another flat tire.  And L___ being privy to this blog and my other tire woes…laughed.

Normally, I am a man of good humor, but at this moment in time, I found it hard to laugh along with L___.  Some time later, after I removed the flat, I noticed that I had not one but two nails jammed in the tread.  Some guys have all the luck.

But wait! I said to myself later when I went to the tire shop.  Surely, those two nail holes could be plugged!  Certainly I wouldn’t have to buy yet another new tire!  But, alas, the one nail hole was too close to the edge of the tread, and yet another new tire (number five?) was bought.

Woe is me.

It’ seems to me that almost everyone has a good car crash story. Fortunately, I’ve never caused a car wreck myself, but I’ve been in a few. This one happened back when I was a mere sixteen-year-old on a rainy Friday night in Pennsylvania…

I didn’t have my license yet, but my friend Chris (same guy from “That was Awkward”), who was also sixteen, had just gotten his license recently. He picked me up from my parents’ house in his blue Oldsmobile, which had many amusing quirks, one of them being that you could take the key out of ignition while the engine was running. Yeah, that’s safe.

We were on our way to the local movie theater when it started to rain. Now, Chris was never that great of a driver, but he was especially inept when it came to driving in areas that he wasn’t familiar with. So, we drove down Orrs Bridge road, which curves sharply to the right just before you go over a short

bridge. Chris, not being familiar with this particular stretch of road, took the turn a little fast, fast enough for me to brace myself and say, “Whoah, dude!”

We made the turn but the car slid over the center line and smashed almost head on into an oncoming car. After the impact, we sat in the car, silent, for a few moments before Chris said, “Man, accidents suck.” From that point on, Chris and I for some reason could not stop laughing. We laughed as we exited the car. We laughed as we realized the three people in the other car were safe. We laughed when we realized that we knew the other driver—a girl from our high school class, who was in tears. And we even laughed when the cop showed up. Now, this wasn’t a very “funny” moment per say, but our laughter probably came from a source of relief or nervousness. It also didn’t help that Chris was wearing shorts, sandals, and a pair of outrageous rainbow-striped, knee-high toe socks for some reason. “Man,” he said, looking down, “why did I wear these socks?”

As Chris went over things with the police officer, and as the other driver and her two guy friends regained their composure, I picked up a piece of Chris’s bumper from the side of the road, a memento from car crash number one.

Ah, yes, yet another tale of woe that involves a car! This time it was my first car: a ‘91 white Honda Civic. What a sweet ride it was. Power locks and everything! It looked very much like this:

So, when I was a junior in high school, I had just started dating a girl that I worked with. We had gone on a few dates, but I can’t remember if we were official yet at the time of this tale. Anyway, our dates were usually less than exciting because, well, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania isn’t exactly known for unparalleled excitement, especially for underage teenagers. So, one night, my date and I were merely driving up and down the Carlisle Pike, trying to figure out how to spend the rest of our evening.

Suddenly, I got a brilliant idea. Why not drive by Kmart and introduce my date to a friend of mine that worked there? Great! I pulled the car into the parking lot; but it looked like Kmart was about to close. I hurriedly got out of the car and my date followed suit. I don’t know why I was in such a rush—maybe I was nervous—but I somehow managed to lock the keys in the car. With the lights on. And the engine running.

“Um…” I said and scratched my head.

“What?” my date asked.

“I just locked the keys in the car.”

“But the engine is still running.”

“Yeah…”

Now what? Well, I told my date, there’s a gas station down the road; they probably have a payphone (ah, pre- cell phone days!). So, we walked together to the gas station where, fortunately, they did have a payphone. I called my dad and told him what had happened.

“How the hell did you do that?” he asked.

I wasn’t quite sure, I told him, but he agreed to drive out to Kmart with a spare key. I don’t remember what my date and I talked about on the way to the gas station, or on the walk back, or while we waited the fifteen to twenty minutes before my dad showed up, but I do have a vague recollection of my dad calling me an idiot at some point or another.

Stupid cars.

Aside from having issues with my car’s tires, I have general car woes as well. When I first moved out here, my radiator blew on my way home, and I was stranded in Whittier for a day. Another time, I had some belts changed at Jiffy Lube, and no sooner had I driven a few blocks away from the service center than the belts snapped off and my engine ceased to run. I had to rent a car for a day after that incident. Then, about a year ago, my battery died on my lunch break, and I was an hour and a half late getting back to work.

Now, my car woes continue. As I had mentioned a few days ago, my check engine light came on. I hoped for the best, but, as always, expected the worst. Once in the past when my check engine came on, I only had to replace the spark plugs. I was not so lucky yesterday.

I pulled into the dealership and a service adviser approached me and my car.

“You here about the noise?” he asked.
“Noise?” I replied. I knew then I was in for it. “No,” I said, “I’m here because the check engine light came on.”

After my car was looked over by a repairman, I had another conversation with the service adviser. He told me I needed my idle control valve replaced, as this was causing the check engine light to come on. Fortunately, and miraculously, the valve was still covered under warranty despite my car being over eleven years old. That was the good news.

The bad news: I needed new brake pads on the front and back and needed the front brake rotors resurfaced. I also needed all of my hoses replaced. Yes, all of them.

Overall, this little adventure cost me about 1/3rd of my car’s total value and took over six hours of work. Good grief.

I was driving home today when my check engine light came on. My engine did not explode, nor did it conk out in the middle of the freeway, but this does not bode well.

I’m beginning to hate my car.

This really isn’t a tale of woe, but it certainly is strange…

I was on the freeway, driving to a nearby library to do some schoolwork. I was in the right hand lane and got stuck behind an old, slow-moving Mazda 626. I only had about half a mile to drive before my exit, so I patiently stayed behind the slow moving car. Then the slow car slowed even more, slamming on its brakes and even veering slightly to the right. Still, I remained behind the car, as my exit was approaching. Finally, the exit came. The slow car took the same exit, but I managed to pass it, as the exit ramp had two lanes. I passed the car to the left, and as I passed, I saw, seated in the driver’s seat, a middle-aged woman who was holding a disposable camera and taking a picture of me.

I was and still am thoroughly perplexed.

So, like I said, my troubles with tires were only just beginning…

As a result of the first tire incident, I had both my front tires replaced. This held me over for a few months until one bright afternoon, as I was driving to the pharmacy in Burbank, I heard the tell-tale thump thump thump of a flat. I pulled into the pharmacy parking lot and realized one of my back tires was now flat. Fortunately, it was the afternoon and I had plenty of space to operate, so I changed the tire myself. It took me a while to do so, but I would become much speedier at changing tires over the ensuing months.

As a result of the most recent flat, I bought two new back tires. But they didn’t last long. I had them about a year before the first one blew on my way home from Pasadena one night. It was dark and drizzling, and I had to change the tire on the side of the road with virtually no light. I soon bought yet another new tire, this time only a single one.

The next back tire blew a few months later on my way back from San Jose. I was hundreds of miles outside of North Hollywood, so I had to buy a new tire that day, less I drive all the way home on the risky doughnut. I had to wait over an hour for the tire to be replaced.

I thought my tire troubles were over, having literally replaced every tire at least once. Yet one day not too long ago, my boss came up to me at work and broke the news.

“Mike,” she said, “I just got back from lunch, and when I pulled into my parking spot, I noticed that your front tire looks low.”

It was low, sure enough, and had a giant silver nail in it to boot. Of course I assumed the nail hole could be plugged for a nominal sum, but, alas, that was not to be. Turns out the tire was damaged beyond repair, and yet again, I had to buy a new tire for my car.

So it goes.

I have four enemies in this world. They are my car’s four tires. It all started about two years ago…

I was driving north from Laguna Beach, CA to a hotel in Fullerton I was staying in while I completed training for a new job. It was night, about 10:30pm, and I was coasting up the 5 freeway at about 75 mph. Then my car started shaking.

At first I thought maybe I had just hit a bumpy patch of road, but when the shaking worsened, I knew I was in trouble. I slowed down and put on my flashers. Cars passed me. I started veering uncontrollably to the right. I couldn’t make it to the shoulder of the road, as another lane was merging with the freeway. Instead, I pulled into the triangular wedge between the merging lanes and stopped. No sooner had I turned off the car than I see something roll away from my car and continue down the side of the road. It was my tire, still a perfect circle, but no longer attached to my wheel. Yikes.

With cars passing me on both sides, I anxiously called AAA. I spoke to a woman and told her what happened.

“Yeah, I’m on the 5 near Fullerton, and my tire just came off,” I said.
“Your tire came off!?,” the woman said incredulously.
“Yep,” I said.

After confirming that I had a spare in the trunk, she sent a tow truck my way and said it would be there shortly. At this point, I opened the passenger door and looked at my wheels. The back tire was still there, but the front tire was completely shredded off, my bare rim sitting on the freeway.

I called my friend in Laguna Beach and told him what happened.

“Where’s the tire now?” he asked.
“I don’t know, dude,” I said, “it rolled down the freeway, I guess.”

Then, suddenly, one of the merging cars hit my errant tire, which was in fact on the side of the freeway. The tire, almost magically it seemed, up righted itself and rolled across four or five lanes of traffic before spinning and falling down in the middle of the left lane.

Fortunately, this is were the excitement ended. AAA came, put on my spare, and sent me on my way, albeit at 50 mph so the doughnut spare didn’t fall off, too. Unfortunately, my tire woes did not end on this night…