Like I said before, Hank and his new tires got along great! We didn't have a single problem with them until July, 2008.
It was a nice summer night so my friend and I decided to drive Hank up in the mountains behind my house. This wasn't anything new to us - Hank and I had been up there numerous times before. The only difference from all of those other times - we were going a bit too fast on the dirt roads. Now, I know what you're thinking - Bekah, you should have known better. Well I did - I told him to slow down. Him? Yes. That's right, I let my friend drive. I always let my friends drive. Here's a little known fact about me - I'd rather be a passenger. Yes, it's true that I absolutely LOVE driving Hank. In fact, it's the only vehicle I'm not prone to crashing. Put me on a little motorcycle? I'll crash it. A four-wheeler? I'll crash it. A fifty-pound scooter that I rented in Culebra? Yep, crashed it on the way out of the parking lot. (That's a story for another day - ha ha ha) So when we're up in the mountains and doing scary stuff, I like to hand the keys over to more capable drivers. This time, however, we were going a little too fast and as a result we caught something sharp and ripped a pretty good size hole in one of Hanks wonderful tires. The next morning, when I took it to the tire shop to get it fixed, the guy told me it wasn't repairable. So the search for new tires commenced. I immediately got on the phone with Jarred - aka best brother-in-law in the whole world - and we talked about the kind of look I want for the new tires. There are so many wonderful choices!
I thought these were pretty fun, impractical, but still fun.
Can you see the skull and cross bones. :)
But after thinking about it for a couple of days I decided that since I still have 3 good tires, maybe I should just look for a couple of used tires. That way I can save some money and buy new tires in about a year.
I went straight to ksl.com to look in their classified section and not more than 5 minutes passed when I found them. This guy out in Sandy was selling 3 gently used tires with rims - they weren't Goodyears, like mine, they were BFG's which are just as good. So I called the man and asked how much he would charge for just the tires. He said $150 for all three. Wow! I thought that was a steal of a deal! Normally tires like that would be around $200 each. So to get 3 for less than the price of one - heck yes! I made arrangements with the man to come look at the tires after I got off work. The man was very agreeable. He had this high-pitched voice, he laughed a lot and he had an accent. It was kind of southern - but not really, it was more like a fake southern accent. It kind of gave me the creep out, but oh well, that's besides the point. After work I called him to get directions to his house and I drove out to Sandy.
This whole time I'd been driving on my spare tire, which, by the way was a 33, not a 35 like the rest of my tires. Just another one of my stupidest decisions, letting some tire salesman talk me into buying a used spare tire that was smaller than my other tires. Stupid! So I was ready to get that little tire off of there.
I pulled into the trailer park where the man lived and suddenly got the creep out again. It was a mixture of his high-pitched voice and the scene of small, unwashed children running around in their diapers that made me whip out my cell phone. I called my friend just to let him know where I was just in case something bad happened. You're probably thinking I am such a Davis County Snob, right? But I don't care - because I was alone and I was driving in an unfamiliar neighborhood and the mans voice really did scare me a little. Well I found his house, I knew it was his because he told me it would be the one with the corvette parked outside and not seeing any other corvette's in this neighborhood - yeah, I knew I had the right house. I called him to tell him I was there. I was expecting him to come outside to meet me but instead he said in his high-pitched, fake southern accent, creepy voice "You can jus come on inside hon, you don have ta knock or nothin'." Creepy! But of course, not wanting to sound rude by saying - no you creepo, you come out here. I just said "Um . . . okay." and I got out of my car and walked up to the trailer. The carport was stuffed full of hundreds of boxes of men's work boots and behind them was a chain link fence that you'd have to walk through to get to the front door. Behind the fence there were piles and piles of junk. Junk everywhere! I carefully stepped in between a couple of piles as I navigated my way to the door. I was getting more creeped out by the second. As I reached up to knock on the screen door all of my safety red flags went off as I saw about 5 scantily clad women mannequins inside the house. I was about to turn around right then and there but then a conversation caught my ear. It was two teenage kids just inside the door. They looked like nice kids so I continued with my knock and they told me to come on in.
When I walked through the door, the smell of dog poop hit me like a ton of bricks. Then I noticed one of the kids was holding a puppy and there were a couple more puppies running around by her feet. There was poop everywhere. And not just poop, just crap everywhere, including piles of clothes, more mannequins, a couple of couches stacked on top of each other. There was a small walkway carved out in the middle of the room. The man spoke from another room "Bekah, s'that you hon?" I looked around to see which room his voice was coming from as I answered "Yep, I've come to look at those tires." Then the man wheeled around the corner, literally. He was an older man with longer gray and white hair and he was sitting in a mechanical wheel chair. He was a big, big man, he wasn't wearing a shirt and his giant gut hung over his entire lap. If it weren't for the small patch of red fabric on either side of his hips, I would have thought he was naked. He obviously had some sort of degenerative disease, like diabetes or something because his feet were in the form of little mangled nubs. The combination of smells, gross body parts and creepy sounds made me want to vomit, but I didn't. I followed the man into another room where he said he kept the tires. That room was the same as the others I had seen, huge piles of stuff everywhere. The tires were right in front and I only had to climb over a couple of boxes to get to them. The tires were in excellent condition with about 85% tred. The only problem was - there were only 2 BFG's, the third tire was a Big O All-Terrain Big Foot, which I had no use for. I told the man I was only interested in the 2 BFG's and how much for them? He rolled his eyes and said he would sell both of them to me for $150. What? I asked him why it was the same price for 2 as it was for 3. Then he went into this long story about how he needs money, he can't work and he's on welfare and he only gets a little bit of money from that each month. So I could either buy 2 tires or take all 3 for the same price. I said fine - I'll take all three then. I had no idea what I was going to do with that stupid Big Foot, but I took it anyway.
Since I wasn't buying the rims the tires were on, we decided to roll the tires out and take them to a tire shop to be taken off those rims and mounted on mine. I tried to convince him that I was a trustworthy person and that I could put them in my Jeep, take them to the tire shop and then I'd bring his rims back. He wasn't going for it though. He said he wanted to ride with me, but I told him we wouldn't be able to fit. He looked at me like I was being completely rude and accusing him of being fat or something - even though he is. So he said fine, we'll take my Van and he wheeled over to the door, grabbed his cane and walked down the steps. Yes, he can walk on the nubs-for-feet, I knew you were wondering. I wheeled the first tire out, trying my best to avoid contact with any dog poop. The teenage boy helped me with the other two, which was extremely nice of him. The man had us load up the tires in his handi-capped van, which, turned out to be quite useful because we were able to load them up on the wheelchair lift and get them right in, no trouble at all. Then the man told me to get in and he'll drive us over there. I kindly declined and offered to follow him there in my Jeep. Again, he rolled his eyes and looked at me like I was being completely rude as he said "You can ride with me hon, I aint a rapist." Ha! A million little red safety flags just went up - it was like stranger danger to the fullest extent. I had to think quickly - I don't know why I was so worried about offending him, but I was, so I just said. "Oh, I know you're not. It's just that I want them to mount the tires on my rims right now, so I need my Jeep there anyway. I'll just follow you there." Whew! That was easy enough.
I followed him over to the tire shop and we waited for the guys to take the tires off the rims. While we were waiting, the man said to me that he really believes in karma. He is sure that his good deeds are going to get him somewhere in life. He is certain that one day, sometime soon, when he sells 3 tires to nice, young lady, for the great deal of $150, that she'll actually give him $200, because he was so nice. Right then the tire shop boy came out with the man's rims and said we were good to go. I paid him $150 and told him it was nice to meet him and thanks for the tires. He got back into his van and drove away.
Karma, huh? . . . Maybe I should have listened to him.
To be continued . . .
