The Laughing Wolf

New Shoes For Pups and Me

Yes, I know the grammar is off, but the scansion isn’t. Pups, my Subaru sedan, is a very happy pup right now. Some of the personal business allowed me to not merely keep a roof over my head a while longer, but to take care of some things that needed to be done a while back.

One thing was some new shoes and maintenance on Pups. The tires very much needed replacing, and other things were coming due. The tires and alignment of all four wheels are now taken care of, with a new set of Yokohama AS430 V-rated tires, which I am told are actually better than the AS550’s I had been looking at getting. I went to get them, NTB only had three, so sold me the 430s with better tread rating and higher cost, for the same price as I had been quoted on the 550s and honored my coupon as well. The difference with new tires, and all four tires newly aligned as well, is tremendous. A balanced and aligned car is like a perfectly trimmed plane: you almost literally think the command and have it happen. There may be a slight pull to the right, but need to do some more road tests to be sure of things. Pups also got a bath at the spa yesterday, since I can’t do things like that right now. Much better, though it does show the damage done to the paint last year when Pups got sprayed by someone pressure washing a house. Even with a quick bath, the bleach did nasty things to the paint on the driver’s side, but the only solution is to take the entire car down to bare metal, reprime, and repaint (and replace all the carpet inside as well, as it was damaged too). That is several thousand I don’t have, so will have to wait. The Yokohama tires come with good ratings and reviews, and the previous set of performance tires I had from them lasted 50,000 miles and were only rated for 30,000. I have had very good service from them, and do recommend them.

I also got new shoes for me. I had managed to break the spine of my gym shoes, so needed new ones. The ones I did have apparently are being phased out, and the new, much more expensive shoes don’t have all the anti-roll technology and such. Being Scot, I refuse to pay more than a hundred dollars for a pair of shoes that are not guaranteed to last more than three months. The solution, however, is that the New Balance I wear everyday have most or all of the same anti-roll and other features, and were on sale so that I got two pair for less than the cost of one pair of the “new” shoes.

Things are looking up. I have to get some new inserts for the shoes, and Pups has to go into the dealer next week for service. Nice to be able to finally do this, for the both of us.

LW