I have not always had good luck when dealing with tire pressure and gauges – like last week.
We were on I-40 heading from Greensboro to Winston Salem for a family reunion and the NCDOT had a done a number on one of the lanes as they prepared for a new highway. It sounded like a jack hammer as we drove across the jagged concrete, and I figured this was not good for the tires. I figured right, because on the way back, the little horseshoe light (indicating low tire pressure) went on. It was still on the next morning as we headed back home up Rt. 29 north. Nancy said we should stop at a garage and get it fixed. I figured the odds would be better to see Sasquatch streaking across the highway than to find a garage open for business on a Sunday morning. But I knew there was a Sheetz station on the way, and I knew they had tire gauges and machines. We got a little gas and pulled up to the tire gauge, I had never used one like this, but how hard could it be? I set the machine at 32 pounds, unscrewed the little cap, and stuck the pressure gauge thing on the tire valve.
“What does it say?” I asked Nancy.
“28”, she said. “No, now it’s 26 No, now it’s 24.”
Oh, crap! I must have been letting air out of the tire. Did I have it on backwards? As I examined this space-age technology-induced instrument, Nancy found a kind soul who had used these gauges before.
“It’s not letting air out,” he said. “You just have to hold it in until the machine beeps, and that takes a while.”
Oh!
We filled the tires with air, the light went off on the dashboard and we made it back home.
But this experience reminded of a time when things did not exactly work out with tire pressure.
It was the summer of 1969. Nancy was visiting relatives and I took the opportunity to visit a friend that night where we enjoyed multiple adult beverages.
As I was heading to my car to go home, I noticed the back right tire was almost flat. I knew there was a filling station at Fry’s Springs and decided to see if I could put enough air in the tire to get me home. I don’t know how much air I forced into that poor tire, but the right rear end was now jacked up like Igor’s hump. I figured that amount of air in the tire would at least get me home and it did.
The next day, there was still air in the tire, so I turned on my procrastinator button, went to work and forgot about the tire.
That evening, I called Pawpaw, my father-in-law, and asked if he wanted to go see the Charlottesville Hornet’s Valley League baseball game that night at the old Burley Field. He said sure, I picked him up, we parked in the gravel parking lot, had a couple hot dogs, booed the umps, and returned to the car where we waited in line to leave,
Suddenly, there was an explosion that sent dust and gravel in all directions. It sounded like a roadside bomb, but there were no terrorists back then. What the hell was that?
Then I pulled forward a few feet and felt the familiar “thump, thump, thump” indicating that not all four tires were in working order. I had blown the back right tire into smithereens. I had a spare that was as bald as a baby’s butt, but it got us home. The next day as I bought a new tire, I made a mental note to never again try to fill a tire without a gauge and after consuming multiple adult beverages.