Blog Master G

Some asshole with no life on a street corner is going to cost me $173.

I almost went to Brand X Antiques to look at wedding rings after my haircut in the Castro this afternoon; I decided against it. Feeling my enthusiastic energy from this morning slowing down a bit, I almost went home; I decided against it. Instead, I pressed on with my afternoon plan to visit Best Buy to look at digital camcorders.

Had I looked at rings or went home, I could have saved $173. On my way from the Castro to the much seedier SOMA district of San Francisco, I rounded a dark corner under the freeway — made darker still by my sunglasses and the overcast day — to be greeted by a bastard throwing shit toward my car. It was all a blur. It happened so fast I didn’t realize what was even happening. I still can’t be sure, but from what I can gather, the bum threw a handful of scrap metal, glass shards, and nails at my car.

Fuming with anger, I proceeded to the Best Buy parking lot to inspect for damage, fearing the worse. What I found was not a scraped or dented fender (thank God), but a big-ass nail shoved through the side of my right rear tire. I was pissed.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Some asshole once dented the quarter panel of the Achieva as I drove past him on Market Street.

I proceeded to Mark Morris Tires for an assessment of the damage. The nail was too deep to patch the tire, so I’ll need to buy a new one. But my RE92 205/55 16″ V-rated Potenzas are apparently pretty rare — and expensive — so I’ll be driving with nail-in-tire until Monday, when I’ll have to fork out $173 thanks to something I could have possibly prevented. (They go for $127 at TireRack, but then there’s shipping fees and having to pay a shop to mount and balance it.)

But alas, the universe had something else in store for me today.

(For the record, the same tire in a faster Z-rated model is actually less expensive — it’s $103. I almost got it, and I’m sure it would’ve been fine, but I’m pretty anal about my WRX and didn’t want tires with mismatched treads. My other three tires are still practically new, or I would’ve opted for Zs all the way around. This was almost an excuse to invest in 17s or 18s and low-profile tires, but $173 isn’t quite the couple grand a doper setup would cost.)

Random WRX link to cheer me up: Car and Driver long-term WRX road test.