3084 Hal has flat feet

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves
as the sole cause of all our adversities."
-- Sophocles --

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Last time I visited here, on Saturday, I complained that life was boring.

Moral - never complain when life is boring. And don't exult when it's going well. Life'll getcha.

Sunday morning I started up Hal to go to the deli, and he immediately complained that ALL FOUR tires were flat. All four? I can assume that

- the computer has found another way to bug out, or
- the cold has caused the tires to register lower, or
- someone let air out of the tires.

All are possibilities.

They're "run flat" tires, so I can drive 150 miles before I have to do something about them as long as I don't go over 50 mph, so I drove to the deli, hoping that if it was because of cold, they'd warm up and the lights would go out.

They didn't.

I didn't bother to check the air pressure, because he had to go in for the recall anyway, so I'd let BMW take care of it.

But, the parts for the recall hadn't come in, so on Monday BMW called to cancel the appointment, so I mentioned the tires, and the gal said to come in. That's a 60 mile round trip. So far, of the 3,000 miles on that car, 360 of them, more than 10%, are trips for service.

Yeah, it was the cold. The mechanic said, "So, you haven't gone through a winter yet, eh?" He says I can expect to see this a few more times (unless I pay $69 and have nitrogen put in the tires), and he taught me how to reset the alert.

So, now I have TWO do-nothing alerts. I am to ignore the "service engine soon" light unless the car "is acting funny", and I should just "ignore and reset the low tire indicator".

Um, why do we have these things if they can be safely ignored? Why bother?

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The other BIG thing that went wrong on Sunday? Next post....