RIDE-CT – Classic Cars Celebrating Classic Cars in Connecticut
THOMASTON, CT – It has long been said that bad things happen in threes. My recent string of adverse luck began with my dishwasher deciding to expire (after at least 22 years of use). A tire on a wheelbarrow then popped the bead and going flat when I overloaded it with logs and tried muscling it home from a neighbor’s house. The third snafu happened when the tire pressure light on my 2010 Mazda MX-5 Miata illuminating unexpectedly and forcing the car to be parked.
These events happened over a few short days, with the sidelining of the Miata late Saturday afternoon being the most stressful. A friend and I were on our way to a car show in Bristol when we headed down the hill on High Street near her house. Near the bottom of the hill, a bit of pavement had been dug up. My right-side tires smashed into the exposed asphalt on the far side of the dirt patch. Even though I was driving the speed limit, the force was sufficient to apparently cause damage.
Within seconds of the impact the tire pressure light came on and a bell began dinging. After a quick visual inspection, I limped the Miata back to Robin’s house. We hopped in her Miata and headed back down the hill to the Thomaston Police Department to report the hazard. A voice on the lobby intercom said a police sergeant would meet us at the scene of the mishap.
It took a while for a seemingly disinterested sergeant to arrive (as he had a medical call to respond to first). Having worked as a police dispatcher in Torrington for a while, I know what it’s like for law enforcement to deal with the public, and I could almost hear him dismissively thinking to himself as he approached, “What’s this guy’s issue?”
As a dispatcher, I’d once taken a call from an alarmed woman who complained repeatedly, “There’s a beaver on McDermott Avenue.” I’d wanted to reply, “And what do you expect me do do about?” I told her to leave it alone and promised to call animal control.
Getting back the sergeant, his immediate response to my good citizen’s report was to accusingly ask, “Didn’t you see the cone?” Well, if I did, a lone cone on the side of the road is a hardly sufficient warning of a road hazard. Also, the driving a low-slung roadster like a Miata requires the eyes to always be on the lookout elsewhere in case others don’t see the small car.
Having been in a the Harwinton V.F.D.’s fire police for years, I likewise knew that sometimes cones get left behind for later retrieval.
Eventually, though, upon hearing the suggestion that a motorcycle hitting the same spot could cause the rider to get ejected, seriously injured or killed, the sergeant seemed to take more interest. Upon our return from the car show maybe three hours later, the sunken hazard had been filled in. When I got of my friend’s car to take photos of the repair job, I noticed a white pickup nearby and went over to see if the driver was person who’d responded to shovel dirt.
Mike Carley was his name and, yes, he’d made the fix. He said he was from Waterbury, was a contractor, and was working on the sewer and water line to a nearby house. I told him what had happened. He immediately promised to cover any damage to the Miata. Just the offer made me like the guy; that and the fact he said he rides a Yamaha XT250 motorcycle.
At that point. I had no idea of the damage. We went back to my friend’s house. I checked the tire pressures Miata and couldn’t get a reading on the right front tire, which took the brunt of the impact. Was the valve stem damaged? How about the tire or the flashy chrome rim? It was getting gloomy by then, which matched my mood.
One problem with the Miata is that it’s so small, it doesn’t have room for a spare tire. Therefore, I was afraid the car would have to be flat-bedded at considerable expense to a repair shop to get fixed. At least until I remembered having a spare set of rims with tires already mounted in the garage at home. We contacted another friend in New Hartford, and he arrived on Sunday morning with tools. In the light of day, we noticed that the sidewall on the rear right tire had a hole. Perhaps the pressure of the impact split it.
To cut to the end, having retrieved the spare set of tires, Richard did the heavy lifting as we changed all four tires. Of course now each needs to aligned, and an appointment has been made for Friday. Carley, meanwhile, called later on Sunday to inquire as to how things turned out with the Miata. I told him he was off the hook and that I was back on the road, not thinking of the pending expense of the alignment.
But, given the world we currently live in with politicians spewing bile and everyone taking sides, finding an apparently honest guy who was polite, friendly and didn’t try to duck responsibility or foist off blame, made me feel immeasurably better than receiving any monetary sum. I’m guessing the rain on Friday night caused the dirt to settle and the area to sink. These things happen. A new dishwasher will get installed soon, too.
