The cold has been unrelenting.
Since last week when I last wrote here, it has not been above freezing. Not once. Most of the time, temperatures have struggled to get into the 20s, and there's been a near-constant 15-30mph wind at almost all hours of the day and night. And, to add to the mess somewhat, on Saturday we got our first snowstorm of the season, which produced whiteout conditions for chunks of an hour or two at a time until it finally stopped and moved off to the south and east.
On top of all of this, my car had to go in for surgery.
Let me explain.
Last Thursday when I drove to work, I got out of my car and saw that my tire was low. Hmm, I thought, I should go pump that up tomorrow on my way to work. When I left work that night, it was even lower -- to the point where it was difficult to steer/the tire was producing drag when I was on my way home. Of course, as it was midnight and midnight is fucking dark, I couldn't see how low, only that it was super-low.
By Friday morning when Daisy got home from work, it was completely flat. Rim-sitting-on-the-ground flat. I called Dad, who brought over his portable air compressor (which plugged into the socket of his new truck) and in the absolutely blistering cold, we ran it for over a half hour to see if the tire could be re-pumped. While it took some air and there was a slightly noticeable change in the tire's appearance, it lost it almost as quickly. My tire was flat, it was fucked, the car was unusable.
Mind you, throughout all of this I had no clue what was wrong with the tire (I never found out, actually, but I'll get to that). There was no visible punctures, no nails or anything sticking out of it that I could see -- it was just flat. I asked Daisy, very sweetly, if she would pick me up a can of Fix-a-Flat on her way home from work on Friday night, as I couldn't exactly do it myself (on Friday and Saturday I was picked up and taken to work by one of my coworkers). Daisy picked up said Fix-a-Flat, and the plan was to put it in the tire on Saturday morning while she was sleeping, and if it pumped it up enough to drive on, to then take it down the street about two miles to the local Firestone Auto Center, who I would just pay to replace it before work. We'd gotten paid on Friday, so this wasn't a huge concern for me.
Except...well, remember how I said we got our first snowstorm on Saturday? Yeeeeah. About that...
The forecast for this storm kept changing on Friday night -- both for accumulations and for start times -- and both kept moving up. Originally they gave the estimate of 1-3 inches, which briefly changed to 3-5 before settling on 2-4, and originally the storm was supposed to start at noon or later in the afternoon. They updated that to 9AM with the heaviest snow starting around noon.
On Saturdays, I'm not awake before 9AM and I have to be at work at 3.
By the time I woke up, it was already snowing. Spitting snow, anyway. By the time I woke up enough to function, it was already coming down hard. My coworker had already asked me if I needed a ride to work on Saturday as well, since she would be running errands in the morning before work/before the snow hit, so I told her yes. The plans for working on the tire on Saturday were scrapped, and my poor baby Monte Carlo sat through a snowstorm with one flat tire and one low tire, helpless and powerless against its onslaught. Because of my tire situation, our Saturday manager (a dear friend) gave me permission to work 2-11 and get out of there when I could.
Of course, this didn't help Daisy, who works overnight Saturday nights and is the overnight manager, and Daisy doesn't come in to work until the evening, sooo....yeah, it was not a fun drive in for her. Or for us to come back home when I got off work and she took her lunch. Or for her to go back to work after lunch. Or for her to come back home in the morning.
By midnight or so the snow had completely stopped, but the cold would remain. We gave up on even attempting to look at/work on the tire on Sunday, as the snow was deep and blowing, most of the roads were still at least somewhat nasty, and it was freezing. Instead we made the plans for Monday to get everything done with the car we could, as I had to go back to work on Tuesday afternoon.
Monday came, and with it one of the coldest, windiest mornings I've ever experienced in Nebraska. Daisy and I woke up, bundled up, and went downstairs to put the Fix-a-Flat in the tire to see if that would help. I cleaned all of the snow and ice off the car after she (miraculously, I might add) fired up and I put the heater/defroster on full blast.
There was a method to this madness, of course -- for those of you who have never used Fix-a-Flat, it's pretty simple. It's an aerosol can full of hyper-expanding, sealant foam that has a hose on the nozzle. You connect the hose to your tire valve and pull the trigger, holding it until the entire can has emptied into the tire. If your rim is off the ground, even if tire is still super-low, you're then supposed to drive the car 2-4 miles to get the foam to evenly distribute and expand. In that even distribution and expansion, the sealant plugs any holes of punctures (if they're not huge, of course) and you can take the car to get the tire replaced -- apparently Fix-a-Flat can be driven on for up to 100 miles, according to the can. Stuff is tough.
Well, that didn't happen. It was so cold that the foam froze. In the hose. In the can. While trying to get it into my tire. Daisy and I were near-frozen too, of course. To add insult to injury, when it froze, the hose exploded, which sprayed the rim of my tire with the foam. Twice.
We'd had enough. We went back inside, freezing and frustrated, and looked up towing places. Daisy had already made us an afternoon appointment with the Firestone place down the street, and if the car was getting fixed that day, we had to get it down there somehow.
"They do everything else there," I told Daisy. "Why don't we see if they can tow me down there too? I mean, since that's where we're going anyway."
Daisy called. Despite the fact that we were less than three miles away, the tow down to the shop would cost an extra $80. Eighty dollars for a three-mile tow. We declined, and considered our other options.
"What about AAA?" Daisy asked.
"I don't have it."
"No, but we could sign up today. I know they do free tows with their roadside assistance stuff."
"Could we get a free tow today, on the day we sign up? I don't know if they'll do that, babe," I said.
She looked into it, called AAA to see what they could do, and about twenty minutes later we both had a full AAA membership for a year...for $60. Total. This included free tows anywhere in Omaha within a 10-mile radius. We scheduled the tow truck to come get the Monte Carlo that afternoon. Due to the weather, however, they were backlogged and we had no clue when they'd arrive -- the lady on the phone apparently gave Daisy a five-hour possible window.
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