First off, here’s what happens when someone steals your driveway.

We’ve wanted to “fix” the driveway since we moved in and that was 42 years ago. It’s a “Model A driveway” which means it was built for an old Model A Ford. Narrow and high clearance. The garage, for example, is small with barn doors that swing out. It’s only good for being a storage shed, and to hold up my antenna.

But back to Mondays, on the way to work on Highway 26 I heard a clicking sound. I knew it was my tire. It went away, but I got an indication that my tire was going flat. If you’ve ever been on Highway 26, you know there aren’t that many exits, and my car was handling just fine. Just fine until it wasn’t and so I pulled off at the next offramp when I realized I could barely control the car. So I got to change a tire on the breakdown lane of Highway 26. It was a fine morning for it, and went without incident.

My next stop was a parking lot where I started my phone calling. The tire was original Toyota equipment and only had 8,000 mi, but I understand how tires can fail. My Toyota dealer (Broadway) told me to call a dealer of Toyo tires (which were on my car) because they didn’t want to deal with it. So I called Les Schwab. They told me I’d have to call Toyo directly and were nice enough to give me the number. Toyo tires only transferred my call once before Candace told me to have the Toyota dealer call. So, It was back to calling the Toyota dealer, who said they’d have to see the tire.

It’s about 18 miles to work, on the highway. I can’t drive on the highway with a donut tire. I was halfway to work. So, I figured I’d just drive back to the dealer on surface streets and leave them my very expensive but useless-without-a-real-rear-right-wheel car until they could get a tire and make it un-useless again.  The dealer looked in their computer and told me it would take a day to get a tire in.

I guess I’m getting some discount on the tire because there’s some road hazard insurance, but I really just want my car back and I can afford to buy a new tire. But nothing is that easy on a Monday.