Sunday, May 18, 2014

Free Air

They used to offer it at gas stations.  In the old days they would provide a neat little stand with a regulator.  Just dial in the desired tire pressure, jam the air hose onto the tire valve, and kaching, kaching, you were pumped up.  Even worked on my bicycle tires, before I got my driver's license.
  So the other day I noticed trusty Mercury Grand Marquis getting a little soft and squirrelly on I93, going into Littleton.  I eyeballed all the tires, and none of 'em looked soft.  So I rummaged in the glove compartment for the tire pressure gauge that should have been there.  No soap, gauge was gone into that great toolbox in the sky. So, I buy a new gauge at Walmart and go looking for a gas station with air, free or expensive, just air.  I'm at the intersection of I93 and US 302 in Littleton, pretty active place with three gas stations.  Only one of them has air.  Seventy five cents a shot.  Wimpy wimpy.  I put it on the right rear which was 10 pounds low.  The hang-on-the-outside-wall compressor racketed away but it wasn't putting much air in the tire.  The seventy five cents ran out, it stopped racketing, but the tire still hadn't reached 35 psi.  I had to fed it another seventy five cents to get pumped up. 

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