[wolf]

There has been a lot going on this week ... Thursday and Friday, in particular.

I went out to my car on Thursday afternoon to a flat tire. I spent about 10 minutes cursing at it before my brain re-engaged I I recognized this was not especially difficult, just frustrating, as I had to be at work in a half-hour, so I borrowed my mom's car, intending to ignore the problem until Friday morning.

Friday morning I am up and ready early, I have coffee, established that my car dealer service dept. can take me, and I place the call for road service.

In exactly the amount of time estimated, a couple of Russian guys show up, put on the spare, and speed off into the daylight.

I drive up to the dealer, ask him to replace all of the tires as this was suggested at my last inspection ... and the guy said, "No, I won't put in an order to replace the tires until we look at them. Let's see." I don't think I've EVER had a dealer service tech say anything like that.

So ... I wait in the waiting room, enjoy some free coffee, make one trip out to the service bay to examine the dry rot I already knew was on my tires which is why they need replacing ... and then he says "These much more expensive tires are the ones that replace the ones on your car now, but these ones here are actually better and cost less."

What? That funny thing is happening again, where a car dealer service tech is saying words that they don't usually know.

Back to waiting.

Then the guy comes in. And he has his apology face on. "I have some good news and some bad news, which do to you want first?" All right, here we are, the universe is back in sync and he's going to tell me something expensive happened, like I drove on the rim and didn't know it and I have to replace the alloy wheel, or the axle broke or something like that ... "Gimme the bad news first."

"Well, Miss Wolf, we found out why your tire blew out. It did have a nail in it, but when we let your car down off the lift the brand new tire on that wheel blew right out. We put it back up and, we had missed seeing this, it's our fault for not checking, but there's these springs in your rear suspension, and it broke and the sharp end was poking right into the tire. It didn't flatten your spare because that's a smaller tire and it didn't touch it, but the full size tire just popped."

Ah-hah. Here it comes.

"So, since we've seen this happen a couple of times, well, we're going to replace that spring like it was under the warranty."

What? What did I just hear? $1000 worth of part and labor ... free. My warranty expired in either 2004 or 2005.

They gave me a ride to work, and I didn't expect to be able to pick up my car until this morning. I was telling my boss the story at work and he just up and said "If it isn't busy, have the ambulance run you over tonight before they close."

I have a hard time believing that this whole story is absolutely true.