Today, I was on tap for giving a presentation but as luck would have it, I had cancelled it previously in the week. However, I still had to goto Waterloo to run some errands so I had to drive in anyways. I woke up early and headed up, but unfortunately ran into some problems.

Somewhere, I drove over a nail and ended up with a flat. I had a spare in the trunk, so it wasn’t too bad and I could still drive around, however getting to Waterloo would be a pain. I headed to Canadian Tire, and while they could seal the puncture, there had been too much damage to the sidewall so I needed a new tire. I guess I had been putting weight on it for too long after I got the flat, also because it was difficult to recognize that I had a flat when it was one of the rear tires.

Anyways, my particular tire wasn’t in stock, and so the other option would be to buy two new tires (shouldn’t have tires of different brands on the same axle). I looked for my tire (which came originally with the car) at Goodyear, Walmart, some random tire store and Canadian Tire before finally locating one at a dealership. There the service representative pushed me to get both tires changed with the argument that mixing new and old tires would have a detrimental effect on all the tires. It was kind of expensive to get a pair of new tires at the dealership so in effect, they were persuading me to go to Walmart!

In the end, I settled for a single new tire and after waiting 45 minutes and with a $150-ish lighter credit card, started on my way to Waterloo around 2. It unfortunately, wasn’t a smooth trip; and the service representative at Canadian Tire’s remark that I could go on the highway, just not over 60 km/hr seemed especially prescient. It was stop and go until the Korean War Museum, and then I had to drive aggressively to reach Waterloo by 4:20, 10 minutes before everyone left.

In any case, I supposed I was lucky to get a flat at a relatively unhurried time, if I had to give my presentation today, I would be screwed. Plus, I think I was able to do as much as I could do at UW anyways, so it wasn’t too big of a loss.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: diary, dumb, uwaterloo.ca