Too Many Titles

I can't decide on a title for this post. Perhaps "How To Make Your CAA Membership Worthwhile" or "How to Keep Canadian Tire in Business" or "How to Make a 10 Minute Trip Take 2 Hours". But, I digress, you are now probably more interested in the story than the title :)
This morning, I happily trotted off to church for Ladies Bible Study, where we had a good meeting. Then I went to my Mom's, as we had planned another afternoon in the kitchen, this time making meat pies. Beef and chicken. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, so no pictures this time. We made good progress this afternoon, and then I had to leave. I left shortly around 4:30 to pick up a few groceries, go home and make supper.

About 1km from my parents' place, there is a stop sign, for which I stopped. When it was safe to go, I went, making a proper left hand turn. As I was turning the corner, I heard a 'POP!'. I thought it sounded rather suspicious, so I kept listening carefully and noticing how the car was handling. It did seem quite bumpy, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to pull over and see how things looked. I went to the back of the car (from whence the POP! came) and lo and behold, the rear passenger tire looked a little flat. I compared it to the front tire and it was decidedly flat. Well, that was a fine thing to have happened. I was on a tight schedule, as Rob had a meeting tonight, and he had to leave at 6:30, and it was his turn to bring snacks, and the groceries I was buying included a few veggies for the veggie tray I was making for him to bring along.

Now, we have CAA membership and the logical thing would be to phone them. But first, I phoned home to talk to Rob. Next, to phone CAA, but before I did so, I called Mom, who offered my father's services, but we figured CAA would arrive sooner than he would. So I called CAA, and since I was on a relatively busy road, the agent said he would have a technician there within 30 minutes. Fine. I sat back to wait. This waiting quickly turned rather boring, until I remembered I had my Ladies Bible Study materials in the car, so I started the next lesson. The tow truck did arrive about 30 minutes later, and in rather short order, I had the donut on my car. Ironically, the spare tire was flat itself, so he had to pump it up. His recommendation was to check the air in the spare every 6 months - when you change the battery in your smoke detector, check the air in your spare tires.

Rob and I had talked again, and agreed I would get the groceries, and we would meet at Canadian Tire, so this we did. Meeting at Canadian Tire wasn't necessary, since I just left the tire there and went back later to get it. By the time I got home, it was about 6:20, almost 2 hours after I left Mom & Dad's, a trip that usually takes about 10 minutes. I quickly prepared the veggies for Rob, and he went to his meeting. When my tire was fixed, I went back to CTC, and they put the real tire back on. I also have a lovely blue screw as a souvenir of the day's events.

Then I went back to Mom & Dad's, to continue working on the pies. We finished the beef pies, we made 38 of them (little pies, the diameter is about 5"). So far, we made 4 chicken pies, but we ran out of pie plates. We're estimating we'll get 12 or 14 more chicken pies. So, that's how you make a short journey long, how you make your CAA membership worthwhile, and how you get a freezer full of meat pies!

But, I have not yet shared the full story about how to keep CTC in business. Although, today, there was no charge to repair the tire, so I'm not sure today contributed to keeping them in business. However, the tire they repaired was replaced 13 days ago. Yes, less than two weeks ago, and today the same tire was flat. Two weeks ago we did have to pay for the replacement. That's an interesting story too. It was a Wednesday, and I was making supper, when I opened the door to the garage to toss something into the blue box. I heard this hissing noise - "hiss", silence, "hiss", silence, and it totally freaked me out. I thought the garage was going to blow up or something! I went running upstairs where Rob was on the phone (not a work-related call), so I dared to interrupt. (Afterall, don't all girls marry to have a man around to deal with scary noises and big ugly bugs? ;)) Rob went to listen, and quite quickly determined that I had a leaky tire, and the leak was over a small puddle of water, making the "hiss", silence, "hiss", silence. When we moved the car slightly, the hiss became constant. Our plans to take the car to Canadian Tire Thursday morning quickly changed to taking it Wednesday night as we thought the tire would be completely flat by morning. Thankfully CTC was able to fix it yet that night (it was after 6), but as the tire had to be replaced, it wasn't free. However, as we all know, a car's primary role in life is to keep us all poor, and its secondary purpose to get us from point A to point B, so everything is just as we should be expecting!