two tired

I got a flat tire yesterday.

Thank you for your sympathy. Fortunately, the weather was nice and there was ample room for me to put on the spare so I spent 20 minutes in the evening air and moved on with my life. Just slower and more carefully.

This isn't the first time I have gotten a flat. This particular car seems to have a tendency to invite flats. Behavior that other cars laugh off, ours takes personally. I know, it isn't the car, but the tire, right? So the tire should stand up to how the road rages, but I think that the car is insulting the tires, making them more likely to be deflated.

So a few years ago, I came out of a gas station and had to merge onto the highway. I didn't quite clear the curb so I popped 2 tires -- both on the passenger side. I found my way to the local branded tire place and waited and waited, and then paid and paid. I shelled out money for 2 new tires and made sure to get the warranty because, you know, tires.

Yesterday, after putting on the donut (and before driving away) I called said tire store to invoke the warranty. 

"Come on in," they said, "and we'll take a look." So I did. And they did.

I was told that this tire was not one that was covered. Strange, I thought...this is the same place on the car -- front right. Why wouldn't the tire be the same? I got lucky, though. He checked in the computer and found an earlier incident which required that this tire be changed so I was covered, just not because of the more recent incident. While I'm happy that I will get a slight discount on the replacement tire, I'm confused. Why wouldn;t the tire be covered based on what happened more recently?

Then I saw it -- and a conspiracy theory was born. And I thought, what better place to post a conspiracy theory than on my blog? So here it is.

When they replaced both passenger side tires, they also rotated them figuring "if this is where this guy gets flats, he is likely to get another flat in these tires and we will have to keep servicing him on the cheap! We should move the tires around so he won't be covered!" And that's what they did. they moved the new tires to the driver's side (I have yet to confirm this by looking at the serial numbers as I'm afraid that this might destroy a perfectly unreasonable conspiracy theory) and moved the driver's side tires into the passenger spot.

The joke was on them, though, because an even earlier incident had forced them to replace the driver's side tire, so they still had to honor the warranty! This is a hollow victory and I'm still going to be out another hundred bucks (plus time, energy and my dread as I drive on the donut), but at a certain point in life, I celebrate the hollow victories also.