I was running around on lunch today picking up supplies, aka beer, for the Beer Tasting IÂ’m hosting this weekend. The shopping was taking long and Ktreva had a conference call so I volunteered to drop her off while I went and picked up lunch for us. I was just running to the Subway a couple of blocks from work. As I turned onto the side street to access the parking lot, I hear a slight grinding noise coming from the vehicle. At first I thought it was the brakes, but I noticed it kept going even after the brakes were released.

When I pulled into the stall I got out of the vehicle and walked to the passenger side. There I heard a sound that made me utter a curse under my breath. It was the slow HSSSSSSSssssssssssssssssssssssssss of air leaving a confined space. Just looking at KtrevaÂ’s van I could tell which tire it was. Her passenger front tire was slowly deflating.

Having been through this before, I started pulling out the jack and tools to get the spare tire out from underneath the van. As I twisted the crank to lower the spare tire, I noticed that the spare wasnÂ’t lowering. The cable was coming down just fine; the spare was still under the body. It seems the metal clasp that holds the tire up rusted to a part under the van.

There I was in the parking lot of Subway swearing, climbing under the van with a pry bar and trying to break the tire free. After about 15 minutes it finally popped off. Everything went smoothly after that. The nuts came off easily, the jack worked perfectly, no one tried to run me over. I put the spare on and lowered the vehicleÂ… and watched as the van went to the rim of the spare. It seems the spare was flat too.

Now folks, I would like to say that I was calm, cool and collected about this. But seriously I went on a cursing tirade that scared the living daylights out of people. A couple of employees that work at my company were coming out of the subway during my rant and heard me. They ran away pretty damn fast. A lot of people in the area were looking at me with an unsure look on their face. I figure they either thought I had Tourette’s or I was a “Special ed” adult throwing a temper tantrum.

Figuring I that I was stuck and had nothing else I could do, I ran into Subway, picked up lunch and headed to the nearest tire place, Discount TiresÂ… on the rim of the spare. Hey, itÂ’s cheaper to replace the spare!

I get to the tire place and they are PACKED! Packed I tell you! I asked how long it was going to be, and the guy told me it would be an hour to hour and a half. Fine, so I sat down, at my sandwich and then called a bunch of people to see if they were still coming this weekend. After about an hour they came and got me. The guy said there was no damage to the tire and he could fix it easily enough. They even fixed the spare.

When I asked how much, cringing waiting to hear him say some outlandish amount, he responded with, “Nothing, it’s free.” Excuse me? Did you say Free? You mean there is no charge? Why is there no charge? “I don’t know, the work order says “free repair”. I even verified with the first guy I spoke with. He said there is no charge.

HuhÂ… no charge. You donÂ’t get that very often anymore do you? That was about the only bright spot on the incident is that other than a loss of my time, it didnÂ’t cost me a thing. The next time I need tires, IÂ’m probably going to go back to this place and check them out. Thank you Discount Tires on Perryville in Rockford, Illinois.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:15 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Yesterday, my bog spawn, Virtue of the rarely updated The Rantings of an Indentured Servant was married. She married a guy that seems to be nice. He's a marine and has 9 months left to serve. Ktreva, Graumagus and myself all rode down together.

Virtue is a re-enacting friend of ours and she had a Scottish-style wedding. The guys were all in Kilts. Since she was one of our own getting married, we decided to do the right thing and have a Scottish Basket Hilted Claymore sword arch for them to walk into the reception under. Graumagus, our friend Maeldun, our friend Giles and myself were the sword bearers. Maeldun and Grau had the honor of smacking the bride and bride groom on the arse with swords. Hey, if he's going to wear a kilt and call it a skirt, he gets one too.

It was a nice outdoor ceremony, the weather was perfect. After the ceremony there was a reception. Since the wedding was at 10:00AM, the reception started at 1:00PM. We followed the directions on my GPS, but it took us to some backwood dead end part of Killem and Rapem hollow. Fortunately we also had directions from the wedding on how to get to the reception. Funnily enough the directions weren't 100% accurate either, but it was easy to find. Especially since we drove past the VFW were it was being held when following the GPS directions.

The reception was fun. We got to sit, visit and have a good time. Everything seemed to go really well. The food was good and there was of course dancing and what not. Mostly we just talked, told stories and caught up with some friends we hadn't seen in a while.

We left the reception around 4:45 PM to head home. We had to leave early because Grau, Ktreva and myself were going to the Raptor's game last night. Man was that a fun game. I really got our defense fired up. I had them out for blood. I had the defensive line right in front of my seats. So I would tell them I needed them to go out there and get the ball. We need a turn over! I ended up pulling a Jimmy McGinty from the Replacements. "Fox, I need you to get me the ball" Fox "You want me to get you the ball?" me, "I want you to force a turn over and bring it back here and show it to me!" Fox, "I'm bringing you the ball!!!!" Me, "Go get the ball!!!!" Fox, "I'm getting the ball! RAAAAHHHHRRR!!!!"

He then ran onto the field and seriously almost killed the quarterback. He then got one of the other Defensive linemen into it, "Sunshine" Matrenga. I don't think he likes the nickname, but it's in reference to the movie Remember The Titans. Ronnie Bass gets the nickname "Sunshine" because he's from California and has long flowing blond hair. Matrenga has long hair with blond highlights. It reminded me of Bass when I first saw it. Either way the both of them kept getting to the quarterback, sacks, forcing bad throws, etc. Neither of them forced a fumble though. Which is fine. They had the Flint Phantom's quarterback running for his life most of the night. I swear he wet himself a couple of times. The Raptors won by almost twice the points.

All in all it was a fun day.

Posted by: Contagion at 11:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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