Hands Off!

So, I was driving home last night from a Bee meeting when a warning light started flashing on the instrument panel of my car, a lighted symbol that looked like this:I had no idea what this represented but I knew I'd better check it out immediately. I pulled into a church parking lot and got the manual out of the glove compartment. This symbol is the tire pressure monitor. Groan. I got out and inspected all four tires, they looked fine to me, no low pressure that I could detect. I drove less than a mile and thought I could sense a sound, a thumping noise... maybe? I pulled over a second time, at the entrance to the water treatment plant, and did a second, more thorough, inspection. This time I felt the tires, all around, with my hands. Why? Who knows. Now my hands were black and greasy and I still didn't know any more than I did before. (Except not to manually inspect tires without a rag in the car!) By the time I got home (another few miles) I was imagining all sorts of horrible things regarding the car/tires as well as trying to convince myself that the warning light was malfunctioning. I pulled into the garage and looked at the tires under more sufficient overhead lighting. Yep, I had a low tire alright. I came in and told my husband, he looked first at me and then at my hands and asked me what I had tried to do. I told him that I had gotten out and felt them; which, in hindsight, seemed really silly when I tried to explain it. I'm grateful he didn't laugh at me. He took the tire off this morning to find a decent-sized screw (with a washer attached) embedded deep in my tire. All is well again, the tire is fixed. A word to the wise here: (from the now wiser) the warning lights on your vehicle can be trusted and you really can't tell a whole lot by giving a tire a rub-down with your bare hands!

Life is Good!