Tires
The hours wasted shopping for tires can be counted up into the thousands. Basically the whole experience can just piss you off. First you need to recognize where you are, and if you can make it to the tire store to get new ones. If by some miraculous reason you have actually planned to upgrade your existing tires before the dubs on your Chrysler rub the tarmac, your one of the psychotic but lucky few.
For the rest of use who use a management by exception approach. Tires will be an immediate un-planned expense and usually the experience of finding tires quickly involves significant pain in the form of your hands reaching down to grip your ankles while some man in a blue smock remarks about how lucky you were to get in before your car completely fell off the face of the earth with you in it.
Luckily there are a few places in Rochester that can help you avoid the pain and still provide you with some decent tires. One place on Main st. is exactly the type of place your grandpa went to avoid his own bending-over routine. This past winter I needed to get some new tires and after looking around I realized all the chain stores are full of shit and that this place was the old school.
I walked in to a haze of chain smoke. The first room had a broken ATV in the corner and some other car parts and junk laying on a cement floor. After walking through what seemed to be someone's closet in their rundown garage I approached a 4 ft bar height counter. There was no one there and there were only three unmatched chairs that looked like they belonged in the previous room.
An arm was falling off of both of them yet they seemed to support their occupants adequately. Probably about 2 minutes goes by before I figure out I need to walk up and ask someone what to do since there was obviously know-one their to help me. Basically it made me feel like I was back in my garage at home working on my own car, except that their were a couple of other people in the garage with me and no one was going to help.
A few more minutes goes by and somebody with a suspicious looking stump of cigarette comes back to the counter for another. I get is attention buy making some sort of noise and he says that there is about a 20 minute wait. I nod "OK", apparently this is a "less is more" type establishment, and sit down in the remaining chair. For the next 30 minutes I freeze my ass off since their isn't any heat.
Finally when somebody does come to claim my body I find a very friendly and helpful guy. The cigarette still dangled from his mouth but he was genuinely helpful in helping me look through the racks of used tires they had for my car. For once I felt like a customer and wasn't being pressured into buying anything. I am sure if I walked out right then I am sure he would have just lit up another smoke and gone on to the next car.
After selecting four sort-of mis-matched tires he says "Well if them's whatcha want, bring up to the front while I finish this last one." There is something of a double take when someone asks you to bring your own tires up to the car so they can put them on.
Its like someone saying, "Ok, I put in your order feel free to come back in the kitchen when the cook says it's ready. Because if you think for a second I am lifting those four plates of pancakes your out of your frigg'n mind."
So after standing and stairing at the back of my friendly customer assistant I pick up the first tire and lug it down to the front, repeating the process for the other three. I then pull my own car up and into the garage so they can begin the surgery on my rims and sure enough it all goes off without a hitch. I just sat back on a stack of tires and watched the whole thing, a few steps away from the air wrenches and grease monkey's.
After it was all over I paid with credit card and drove my car out of the garage and home. The balance of the tires on the rims wasn't perfect but hey when your 22 not much is in balance anyway. Luckily I made it home and after paying the cheap price of 180$ for four used tires, I felt the pleasure of not having to walk around funny all day knowing I had been bent over at the tire-shop chain stores.
-IAN
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