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There’s a killer on the road

His brain is squirming like a toad…

Um…ok, so I’m not actually going to write about The Doors or Riders on the Storm.  I AM going to write about road hazards.  In particular, nails on the road.

WHY ARE PEOPLE LITTERING OUR ROADS WITH NAILS?!

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Thank you.

Ok, so that wasn’t it.  But anyway, if you came by at noon to look for a post, you’ll note that there wasn’t a new one.  That’s because I was dealing with various things.  One of them was…a nail in my tire.  In fact, it’s the second nail I’ve picked up driving to and from Clib.  I am THE ANNOYED.  Even now, when everything has been fixed already.  I am still THE ANNOYED.

The first nail I picked up was driving to and from Clib, as I implied before, but when I noticed something was amiss, I was in bumper to bumper traffic on a stretch of the freeway that was under construction.  I do not blame the construction on the freeway for the nails.  You generally don’t use nails when constructing freeways.  A lot of concrete though.

Anyway, I mention the construction zone because it took away the shoulders of the freeway.  That meant that there wasn’t any place to pull over and put the spare on.  It’s also hard to do when you’re in the left lane and people in LA drive like they own the road and are mortally offended when you signal that you want to get into their lane.  So, this boils down to, I had to drive on that tire.  And in doing so, I ruined the sidewall.  Which means I couldn’t patch the tire, even though the nail was very clearly punctured the middle of the tread and would have been very patchable.  Except that I ruined the sidewall.

Moral: Do not run on a flat tire because you’ll ruin the sidewall and then you can’t patch the tire even if it were patchable to begin with.  Then you will have to buy a new tire and it will be very annoying because your dealer won’t actually have it in stock and you’ll have to order it and it will cost a lot and you haven’t even had the car for two months.

Today’s nail in the tire actually occurred several months ago.  I noticed that I had a slow leak in one of my tires.  I looked around to see if I could see a nail or something, but I couldn’t find anything.  I felt around the tire for stray breezes too.  But it was a slow leak and it wasn’t something I could feel.  So…I drove on it.

Now then, you might be surprised that I drove on this tire that had a leak in it especially after my last experience.  The difference was here was that it was a slow leak and I could keep ahead of the leak.  I was putting air into that tire every 3-4 weeks and every time I did that, I would look for the nail.  I finally found it the last time I put air into the tire a week or so ago.  It was very small.  It was right in the groove in the tread.  It looked like a small pebble or something that had lodged itself into the groove.  But it wasn’t.  It was a nail.  And it was nary 0.25″ away from the sidewall.

Why do I mention that last part?  Because a hole nary 0.25″ away from the sidewall is not patchable.  You can try plugging it, and actually, that’s what the nail was doing, but you can’t patch it.  And a plug is not as reliable as a patch.  So I had to buy yet another tire.  And I was annoyed.

But since I knew my dealer wouldn’t have the tire in stock, I called ahead and asked them to put one on order for me.  Actually, I drove by too to show them this nail so precariously close to the sidewall.  My service person immediately agreed with me that the tire was not patchable and put a tire on order for me.

Yay.  I hadn’t even put 20k miles on these tires yet.  And I’ve had to replace two of them.  Yay.

STOP THROWING NAILS ON THE ROADS!  Gosh.

Ammonia

Let’s talk about ammonia.

Perhaps you’re completely taken aback by my suggestion.  Perhaps you are wondering why I would want to talk about ammonia.  Perhaps you’re thinking about where you last saw that bottle of Windex and whether or not you should buy a new bottle because people are forever stealing your Windex.

Those are all excellent thoughts.  Well, maybe not the one about being taken aback.  That’s not really a thought.  But anyway, I would like to talk about ammonia because recently, I had this wonderful task of cleaning the kitchen.  In particular, the stove, oven, and range hood.

You might not think that this is a big deal.  Well, it is.  It is because my family is Asian.  Many Asians stir fry a lot.  Stir frying at home, while it’s nowhere near as greasy and gross as what you find in a typical Asian restaurant, still involves oil and is still frying.  That means you get a lot of grease and oil buildup on the stove and surrounding surfaces if you’re not careful.  And…that’s what happened with the stove and range hood that I was cleaning.

Now you’d think you can just use a degreaser, let it sit for a minute, and then wipe off this huge layer of grease with a sponge leaving this wonderfully clean surface in its wake, right?  I’m sure you’ve seen a commercial for an oven cleaner that magically works like that, right?

Well, none of the oven cleaners/degreasers that I’ve ever used works like that.  Nothing happens after a minute.  If you read the instructions, they normally ask you to leave it on the mess for at least 15 min.  But not just that, it has to be wet.  After a few minutes, the cleaner starts to dry.  So that means you have to baby sit the mess and keep spraying the moment it starts drying off so it can soak.

If you manage to do this, the oven cleaner/degreaser still doesn’t necessarily work like how you see in the commercials.  I don’t think you’ll ever be able to take a sponge and just wipe a whole section clean of grease.  I think the commercials are lying.  Or at least, greatly exaggerating.  All the oven cleaners/degreasers I’ve ever used only loosened the grease at best and make it slightly more feasible for me to scrub off the grease using a lot of scrubbing power.  Scrubbing power is kind of like drill power, but not really.

BUT!  I have found something that makes it seem like you’re in a kitchen cleaning commercial!  And that something is ammonia.  You can get a bottle of 10% ammonia from the hardware store for a few bucks.  If you pour about half a cup of that into an enclosed container or trash bag and then stick say…your cast iron stove grates that are hideously greasy into said enclosed space and the wondrously acrid ammonia fumes work their magi for a few hours, you might be able to pull the grates out of the ammonia fumes and wipe off the grease JUST LIKE HOW YOU SEE IN THE COMMERCIALS!

Now then, stove grates aren’t like oven doors.  You could stick a half cup of ammonia in the oven and close the door for a few hours and then pretend you’re in a oven cleaner commercial, but I actually wouldn’t recommend it unless you really had no other recourse in cleaning your oven.  Ammonia fumes are dangerous.  If you aren’t careful, you’ll burn your eyes and lungs and skin.  It’s really better to do all your cleaning with concentrated ammonia (Windex is only like 5% ammonia) outside or in some well-ventilated space.  Your oven is not a well-ventilated space.

So anyway, that’s my story about ammonia and my kitchen cleaning adventures.