The Attempted Rimjob (or: More Fun At Conrad's Good Year)

Hey, kids! Ready for some more "SUDDEN CAR REPAIR!!! OH NOES!!!" stories?

Well, tough shit. Neither was I.

Early yesterday afternoon, I walked briskly to my car, jumped into the driver's seat, started the engine and drove about fifty feet or so before I realized something has gone rather terribly wrong with my passenger-side front tire. Upon investigation in the parking lot, I saw to my surprise that I had spent the last half-minute of driving on my tire rim: the rubber itself was collapsed around said rim and flopping about uselessly. I quickly reversed back into my parking slot and then headed inside to call for a tow.

To answer the questions before they leave your lips (as they have with everyone else's), there was no option of trying to put on the spare at this time. First off, our parking lot was largely encased in a sheet of ice and I felt no great desire to see how the manufacturer-supplied jack mechanism would hold up on that surface. Even if I had felt daring enough to attempt this stunt, the spare tire, jack and tire iron are out of my reach for the time being as the trunk lock on this car has been busted since about 2002, and perhaps earlier.

Secondly, I currently have no AAA coverage. Sometime later that night, I thought of that option and pulled out an outdated membership card from my wallet. I then asked Sarah if we had let our membership slip. She replied that she had renewed her membership, but I had opted to let mine lapse, and saying at the time "Bah, I really can't see a need for it at this time."

Yes indeed, good call, Brainiac ...

Anyway, calling around to towing companies yesterday was a fruitless endeavor: either the tow trucks couldn't get to me on time, or they couldn't reach me when they did arrive in my area (the phone lines here have been annoyingly prone to not working very well when calls that we actually need come through) and subsequently buzzed off to another call somewhere else. Being that Tuesday is a bit of a pressure-cooker day for getting orders done and product tagged and shelved, I was in a time crunch and couldn't wait around until dark for a tow truck, so I had give up the chase quickly and finagle a ride to work a couple hours late from my neighbor (and occasional co-worker) Steve.

With a veritable snowstorm dumping down on the area (thanks for the assist, Mother Nature!) I was up early this next morning to start calling around towing companies again as it is impossible to schedule these things ahead of time. At 11:30, the wrecker arrived and it was a rather suspenseful ride to Conrad's on unplowed roads in a flatbed wrecker with a car chained to the top. I'll take this time to say hats off to the guys who drive those trucks in these kind of shitty conditions: the driver was smoking and chatting relaxedly while I was tensely strapped in my seat, watching the road ahead and hoping this guy wouldn't roll us over or send us skidding into a ditch.

Following this white-knuckle trek through the thickest snowstorm we've had so far this winter, the car and I were left safe and sound at Conrad's Good Year. If you've been keeping up with events in this blog, then you'll recall that Conrad's is the same place that I dropped a fucking shit ton of money on car repairs back at the end of July: the end result of this sent my finances (and the rest of this year) into a tailspin that I am only now starting to see the end of at last.

I should make it clear that going to Conrad's was not a choice I was happy to make for a repair destination: I haven't been entirely sure how much I trusted these guys after seemingly everything that could have went wrong went wrong the last time I was here. However, I couldn't afford a tow to Cal's Marathon in Mentor (my longtime trusted car repair business) and even if that weren't an issue, Cal is nearly impossible to schedule repairs with on short notice.

So, the ideal plan for today was to get the car to Conrad's as early as possible, get a new tire popped on and get the hell out in time for work at 2. That plan went out the window pretty quickly as the manager informed me that it would be a couple of hours before my car could even be looked at, let alone repaired. This wasn't a horrible setback: I'd been formulating a backup plan in case of this happening. Everything I needed to get the important work for today (a couple of orders I needed to place with suppliers in New York and California) was at home in the office, so all I needed to do was get a taxi back to the condo and get to work. I called the taxi dispatcher and was told a ride would be on the scene in about twenty minutes. Rawkin'.

While waiting for the taxi to arrive, of course, my car must have shot to the front of the repair queue. The manager mentioned to me that the car was being looked at as we spoke, and I hurriedly called back the dispatcher to cancel the ride as it looked like I wouldn't be hanging around that long after all. Well, that changed pretty quickly too, as it turned out: I was then told a few minutes later that my car had been inspected, but couldn't be worked on for another couple of hours.

While that alone was enough to get me a wee bit exasperated as I realized I'd have to call the taxi dispatcher again and then re-arrange a ride home, I started to get angry with the manager as we discussed exactly what these guys had in mind for my car. I was not at all surprised at all to be told that the rims on the blown tire were pretty bent up from being briefly driven on (not to mention dragged onto the back of the wrecker), and I told the manager that it didn't matter anyway as I had no intention of replacing the rims if that were the case: a plain ol' new tire would be just fine.

Apparently, this didn't compute with the manager and he told me with palpable incredulity that I needed a new rim since my tire wouldn't match the other tires (he apparently hadn't noticed that one of my other tires already had no fancy rim) and there had to be a new rim on the tire to test the seal of the rubber and blah blah blah: in effect, he was forcing a brand new rim down my throat and asking $230 for the damn thing before even getting to mounting and balancing the damn thing. Oh Jesus, here we go again ...

I was going to be paying $230 for a goddamned new tire with a snazzy official Beretta rim when all I needed and wanted was a plain old black steel donut instead. Luckily, a mechanic nearby was one of the guys who had worked on my steering system over the summer and remembered all the hair-pulling and wild tossing about of money from back then and I'll be damned if he didn't steer the manager quickly away from his $230 hustle and down to a simple $75 replacement wheel instead, which is pretty much what I'd had in mind in the first place. It would probably be a few hours or maybe a day before a replacement tire was in the shop, but I was too relieved to care at that point.

Feeling a lot better since it appeared that this business was going to be a minor cash inconvenience and not the dreaded financial coup de grace that would cap off my 2005 with a bang, I called the taxi dispatcher again to re-schedule a ride and was told that all the drivers were backed up thanks to the continuing storm and I'd probably be waiting for an hour and change. I said that was fine and then sat down with an irritated sigh in front of the store's T.V. set, which was being manned by the three older women who were also waiting on their car repairs.

The communal choice as I sat down was the FOX network, which was at the time showing a typically hyper-caffeinated episode of Malcolm In The Middle. I wasn't very pleased with this choice, but let me tell you, Malcolm was fuckin' Masterpiece Theater compared to the inhospitably vicious, soul-sucking moral vacuum that was The Maury Povich Show, which came on immediately afterwards. I had no idea ol' Maury was still peddling this shit on the airwaves, and the unrelenting screaming and bleeped-bickering between the, uh, guests on stage was actually starting to make me miss The Jerry Springer Show. Thankfully, the taxi finally pulled up to the front of the store and I finally got the hell out of there.

A couple of hours later, with the necessary stock orders and sales work finished in the comfort of my home office, Sarah arrived home from work and was preparing to give me a lift to Record Den so that I could at least cover the evening shift when, to my surprise, Conrad's called to inform me that the car was done and I could come pick it up at my convenience. Huzzah! Upon arrival at the store, I was told that the tire was fixable after all, and that they had resealed the rubber to the refinished rim and all was good. I paid the amount, grateful to be mobile again, yet also swearing off Conrad's in the back of my mind (and making a note here for anyone who might be considering using them in the future) for any future non-emergency repair jobs. I was a bit wary of being screwed over after dropping so much cash there over the summertime, but being given the hard sell on a fucking expensive new rim and tire when the old one was still fixable (wow, imagine that!) the whole time pushed me far enough to stick these guys on my shit list. Jerks.

Cal's Marathon, I'm coming home.


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