The grass might not be greener...

...but in certain parts of Cedar Springs, the air apparently is! :o)

I had a slow leak on my driver's side rear tire that Dan fixed for me the night before last. When I went for a grocery run this afternoon I discovered the air had gone out again! Dan said to stop by Great Day, 'cause they have free air. Hehehe....free air. That's a bit of an oxymoron thinks me. :o) I dropped by GD just to see how good their free air really was. I'm not the best with auto-related fix-its, but I've pumped up a few bike tires in my day so I figured it couldn't be that hard to operate a compressor. I unscrewed the stem cap, tested the fitting on the air hose, pushed the "ON" button, and.....................NOTHING HAPPENED! The squeeze trigger that I was accustomed to seeing wasn't anywhere to be found, and the pressure gauge registered "Nil."

I got on the phone with Dan convinced I must be doing something wrong---nope, what I did should've worked. A guy in a blue Ford pulled up next to me and I figured two heads in person were better than me on a cell phone trying to describe the situtation to Dan. :) My knight in rusty blue Detroit armor agreed to help and wouldn't you know, he began looking for the “pressure handle” that I had searched for as well. It wasn’t there! I don’t know if someone broke it, or if we just didn’t know what we were doing (me, I could concede that might be true—but this guy looked like he knew his way around a vehicle). His comment as he walked away: “That sucks.” :o) However, I should've known better than to ask for help from someone who drives a Ford. I discovered that in the process of trying to help me, my "knight" let out a TON of air in my tire, leaving it pretty much flat at that point! :o)

Annoyed with GD's free air, I limped over to Speedway and determined to use theirs. I ended up having to wait in line while a man filled ALL of his tires (no doubt to President Obama’s tire inflation standards), then sit in his car, adjust his mirrors, put on his seat belt, rev up his engine, and finally roll away…only to discover that the air at Speedway is apparently more pure than GD as it costs $0.75 per use. :o)

Grumbling, I headed across the street to the bank because, of course, I had no cash on me. After punching in the wrong pin number (another long story) I retrieved my precious monies and decided to snub Speedway in favor of BP. Pulling up to the dispenser (and passing our Schwan delivery man in the process) I discovered that Speedway and BP must get their air from the same source---and obviously it's not God. I ran inside with my $20 to get change. The gal behind the counter was in deep conversation with, well, I shall call him Gas Man. It was a "He said, she said" kind of exchange and I tried not to look impatient. :o) I waited. She gave me change. I ran back out, put my money in, selected “Air” (my other choice was "Vacuum" -- tempting!), attached the hose to my tire stem, and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The machine, I thought, ate my money! *Angry eyebrows* I ran back inside mumbling and grumbling by this time to tell the gal at the front desk what happened—successfully interrupting her conversation with G-Man again. :o) She punched in a bunch of buttons, said something about, “I don’t know why that thing runs fine all day and then somebody unplugs it,” and gave me my money back with the promise to send somebody out to check the machine. I heard her mention a plug so I went back out armed with my replacement $0.75 and searched for a plug.

Eureka! :o)

I filled my tire without incident, ran back inside to return the change since the machine was working, and got an unpleasant look as I interrupted BP's conversation with the Big G yet a third time. And now my tires are all riding high!

Goes to show that while the grass might not always been greener on the other side, for $0.75 you can have three minutes of the cleanest air you only ever dreamed of breathing!