Ah, always a good time when you’re nearly done with the blog post for the day, only to accidentally close the window you’re typing in when you meant to instead close another. My bad. Here goes again.

Long story short, the last thing a girl wants to see as she’s leaving work in the evening is a “low tire pressure” light come on.

Before exiting the lot entirely, I pulled over to see if I could tell which tire was, well, tired. It looked like it was my right rear, and then I remembered I had a tire pressure gauge — courtesy of Longo Lexus — in my glove box. I whipped it out, went to work, and sure enough, my right rear was at 20 PSI instead of the recommended 37 PSI. Hm.

Remembering that I drive past Lexus of Westminster every morning, I thought I’d swing by en route to the casa. Not so much for air, because that’s easy enough to find…but I was genuinely hoping they’d want to help a girl in need, maybe put the car up on the rack and find the foreign object that I suspected was/is impaling my tire. I drove a short distance, pulled into their lot a few minutes before 7 and chatted with a nice salesman — only to find out that their service department is located off-site.

Of course.

The salesman tried phoning them, but nobody was answering. I filled him in on my tire pressure situation, and he tried to tell me that my right rear wasn’t low, but that the tire was “supposed to sit like that.”

Eh, no. It’s not.

I explained that I’d taken the pressure myself, and that it was low. He apparently didn’t believe me, because he checked them all again.

A few minutes later, he proceeded to point out that my right rear was, in fact, low. Thanks, buddy.

Since they couldn’t be of much help and any other place that I found would likely be closed for the night with no desire to search for my low tire cause, he referred me to Walmart across the street, since they have an auto service center there. Maybe they’d be open.

I thanked him, hopped in my car, crossed multiple lanes of traffic after 10 minutes of waiting for an opportunity to do so and pulled up right as one of the guys was putting the cones up for the evening. I disregarded the hint of “no more customers” and explained my sitch. The guy asked me what my tire pressure was, and when I told him the recommended PSI was 35 in front and 37 in the rear, he almost laughed at me.

“Nooooo, that’s not right,” he said.

He opened up my driver’s side door and reviewed the sticker. Sure enough, 35/37. “Oh, wow! That is correct!” he continued. I smiled and nodded.

He, too, was happy to take my tire pressure (a third time!) and actually ended up putting a tiny bit of air in the other three, while filling up the right rear to its recommended PSI.

I thanked him profusely for checking them all, drove off just as the last hint of daylight was being nudged out of the sky by a thick marine layer, and was happy to see the low pressure light disappear. All the way home, I kept my eyes peeled for gas stations where I could filled up a tire in case I need to put some more air in come morning. Almost stopped to finally buy an air compressor, since now seemed like the best time to have one, but — meh…some other time.

Not the most quiet nor the most eventful evening, but one — now that I think about it — which was a kind evening. There’s something funny about having people not believe you when you tell them a tidbit about your car, but I guess at the end of the day, sometimes they just want to see it for themselves. Therefore, maybe they’re coming from a place of genuine concern — and if they are, is that a bad thing? Not at all.

Tonight I am thankful for Mr. Lexus, Mr. Walmart and for my trusty Longo tire pressure gauge. They all helped me tonight, and while I appreciate a solid assist every now and again, this is one time I’m hoping I’m simply tired in the morning — and not tire-ing again.