3/4/01

Yes, it's me. It really is.

Anne's Journal of Minutiae

Sunday,
March 4, 2001

What a weekend. See the bent, shiny object on the left? It managed to bore its way into my right rear tire Saturday night. I had just returned home around nine o'clock and what should I smell as I got out of my Jeep? Ah, but the smell of hot bellows air which can only come from the inside of a blown tire. Somehow, on the way home, I picked up this...thing and it killed my tire. Granted, my tires are now nearly five years old (they're BF Goodrich All Terrain TAs) -- still they weren't quite ready to die just yet. No matter, thought I, for tomorrow we shall put on the spare and trot off to whatever tire establishment might be open on a Sunday.

Oh. Were it so easy.

Let me first tell you about my spare. You see, in Chrysler's (now Daimler/Chrysler) infinite wisdom they decided that Jeep Cherokees and Grand Cherokees (along with Wranglers without "limited slip") didn't require a full-sized spare. So, instead, one receives a skinny 50-mile tire -- which makes absolutely no sense when one's Jeep is a 4 x 4! So, when my Jeep was only a couple of months old I replaced the stock Goodyear tires with my BFGs -- adding a fifth tire and rim for a spare.

Well... We tried to install that spare to no avail. You see, the rim I'd bought for the spare turned out to be the wrong fit for my wheel! Oh, it was the correct size -- but the lug bolts were all wrong (they were straight instead of "acorn"), and the placement was all wrong. I'd been driving around for four and a half years with a useless spare! So, my brother took my "spare" and my mortally wounded right rear tire to Sears and had them switch rims and toss the useless one.

So, with the spare now installed on my Jeep I drove to Sears to get my new four tires (and hopefully a rim that would FIT). Firstly, the servicewriter tells me that they only have "custom" rims. (No problem -- I'll deal with that on Monday; Discount Tire is sure to have the correct rim.) The servicewriter cheerfully taps in all of my personal data, size of tire (P215/75R15), phone number, address etc etc. Then he stops tapping. "Oh-oh," he says. "We don't have the tires you want in stock. We'll have to order them and with the rains, it could take a few weeks." Then, he tries to sell me on some other brand. "Nope," I say, "only BFG All-Terrain TAs." Then he replies, "You know -- I believe the All-Terrains were discontinued in 1999 and replaced by the All-Terrain KOs -- which won't fit your truck. How about--" "Ah, no thanks," I say, "I'll just check the other tire stores." (Discount Tire, here I come.)

The first thing I do when I get home is check the BF Goodrich website. Lo and behold, they still have All-Terrains for MY Jeep: the new Radial Long Trail T/A! That guy was full of beans! ARRGGGGHH! So, tomorrow morning I'll be at Discount Tire getting my new tires and, hopefully, CORRECT spare rim.

One last thing is still bugging me: Can someone identify that stoopid shiny tire-killer? I'd really like to know what it is. I suspect that it's a fragment of an old Honda emblem. Just curious.

One of the journals I used to read went "password protected" a few months ago. I won't mention the name of the journaller... Well, she says "buh" and "jeebus" a lot, takes digital pictures...works in a library... Anyway. I had always enjoyed reading her entries (it was always the first one I'd read) -- she could out-rant just about anybody. I emailed her a couple of times and she was always nice enough to reply. A few other journallers had "offered" some rather nasty criticism of her writing -- which they had no right to do. And so this prompted her to password protect her journal -- to allow only the "well-behaved" (her words) to read her journal.

I thought that I was one of the "well-behaved" and so I sent her an email asking for a password. I never got one. I never received an email telling me that I would be denied a password. Which, of course, puzzled me to no end. Sigh. So I was forced to remove her site from my "I read..." links page -- mainly because it would be rather pointless to direct people to site which they could not enter.

So, now she's back -- and I get to read her journal again. I've also re-added the link to her journal. Just hope it stays that way.