Re-tyred
“Tyres deserve more respect”, I thought as I drove to the tyre-place. The rear tyres on my car have reached their limit, after 51,000 miles. In all those miles I had never worried about them. They just worked. On hot dry roads, on wet roads and on cold icy roads they always allowed me to stop and start without fuss. When I drove into potholes at 60mph they just took it and bounced back. When I had to drive up a kerb, they squeaked a bit, but did the job.
My tyres have travelled a quarter of the way to the Moon. Not literally. They have not been into space. And anyway if you drove to the Moon your tyres would explode once you reached the upper atmosphere because of the reduced pressure. And there are no roads up there so you wouldn’t go that way, even if you were using sat nav. And everyone who goes to the Moon probably uses some sort of sat nav.
Anyway, I needed new tyres and I just wanted to pay tribute to the old ones. They are like your IT infrastructure. You only ever hear people talking about them when there is problem. No one notices the 99.9% of the time that they are working fine. If you look after them they will give you good service and somewhere, far from your daily grind, there are scientists, perhaps in white coats, who are finding ways to make them even better –quicker, more economical, more durable, maybe in different colours.
I’m looking forward to meeting my new tyres.
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I would like to add my own tribute to your tyres. 51000 miles is an outstanding achievement.
I have just waved goodbye to a pair of tyres after 18000 miles. The tyre man told me they’d done quite well as he ladled Irish levels of debt onto my credit card and tried to subdue his smile.