Rooting For The Tire

 We root for a lot of things, family, sports teams, sometimes the company we work for, and even presidential candidates.  I like to root for unusual things.  Recently, I was rooting every day for the State of New York to finally count the ballots from the election.  I think it was two days ago they finally managed to post 99% of the vote. For weeks they have been at 84-86%.  By the way, Biden won New York by 2 million votes.

So, how about rooting for a tire? Have you ever done that? I had a leak in my front right tire. Don't you hate it when that light comes on and you wonder, how serious is it? I did put air in it and waited to see how long before the dreaded light would come on again. Come on tire, you can do it! Well, I got through a couple hours to end the day and checked how it felt the next morning and it felt good.

A few hours later as I was leaving the warehouse with a full van full of boxes, I knew I needed air again. When I got to the nearest gas station my luck began to change.  A guy was putting air in his tire and stopped and handed me the hose and I used his air. It was free! We used to have a couple places that had free air, but now you have to pay for it.

I put in extra, extra air and checked the time.  It was 8:30 am and I needed to make it through until 6 pm when I would drop the car off to be checked. Maybe I'll only have to put air in one more time, that would be great. The first hour was nerve racking, I kept looking at the tire and giving it an occasional squeeze.  I was clapping too, encouraging the tire to hold on to that air.  Two hours in we are still looking good, maybe I have a real shot at getting through this?

It's now 12:30, four hours in and 5 1/2 hours to go and still the light is not on.  The problem I had was that every time you turn the car on, that light goes on with some others that mean something else.  I was breathing a sigh of relief each time when the light would shut off.

It's 2 pm, I think I'm going to make it! Come on tire, hold that air! Sometimes when you're striving for a goal you hit a bump in the road.  What if it's actually the curb? If you're going to bump the curb is there any chance it would be the other tire? No, no chance at all.  The tire seemed okay and it still had air.

At 4 pm, the light went on.  It had lasted 7 1/2 hours, but it still felt good.  Do I risk not putting air in now when there's only two more hours to go? It did last awhile the last time the light went on. I gambled unnecessarily and I won.  It was 6 pm and I parked the car at Meineke and congratulated my tire on a great job.

One question remained, was this the tire's last mile? Would it have to be replaced or could it be patched? THE TIRE LIVED-to ride more miles and miles with me. Encouragement works, even on a tire.