To The Shop

 The problem with being an introvert, is that after a full week of having to do customer service...my willingness to interact with other people goes way down.

To the point where I just want to go home and hermit for a month straight. 

As any interaction with a person takes energy. 

And I don't have a high battery for that. So I'm often left drained after work and it takes a lot of willpower to actually go anywhere but home after my shift ends. 

Which means I tend to put off doing errands and such until I absolutely need to do them.

It doesn't help at all, that with the pandemic, I'm rather leery of being around people constantly.

And having to constantly deal with anti-maskers and people wearing masks improperly at my job...

It's hard to want to go face that in other public places too.

Especially when previous experiences show that the places I want to go to or need to go to...have their own fair share of people who can't wear masks properly.

It's stressful having to be on guard all the time. 

In any case...last night I finally gathered up the courage/willpower to schedule an appointment to take my car in and get it checked.

As for the past little while...probably a good two or three months now if not longer.

I've noticed that the 'smoothness' of my drive has gone down.

Going certain speeds I could see my car wobbling back and forth.

Which meant that there had to be an alignment issue with my tires. 

But I'd also noticed that when braking there was a bit more ...'jumping' with my brakes. 

Like I was braking just fine. The car just felt like how an airplane feels when it's coming into land. 

And while it's not bad. It has gotten more noticeable as time has passed. 

So I went online and after some time psyching myself up...scheduled an appointment to get my brakes checked -just in case as I didn't believe anything was majorly wrong with them- and then to get my tires rotated and my alignment adjusted. 

I suppose it's slightly less scary to schedule it online rather than try and call or just drop by.

Though normally I would have just dropped by. 
However, I was using a different place than normal to try them out, and with the pandemic...I'm not sure if they switched anything in procedure and such.

Though this particular place had helped me out before when I just showed up. 

Still. Since this was a more 'major' fix than a minor one. I figured it would be safer to schedule an appointment.

*shakes head*

I don't know why I scheduled lol. The people were like ??? "Why you here?" when I showed up. lol. I told them I had an appointment and they were like ??? "Huh?" lol they went to check and yep. I had an appointment.

And then they were like "Which car is yours?" after like ten minutes....like I didn't put that into the appointment and the fact that I told them -I'm pretty sure I did- when I came in which car was mine. 

Silly silly.

In any case. 

They said that the brakes appear fine. Though when they were rotating the tires around they noticed that one of the bolts on the front left tire that is part of the braking system had snapped off.

It's not a major 'need to fix it right now!' sort of thing since there's 4 total bolts holding the thing in place. 

However. It's not an 'easy' fix either.

As apparently you have to take apart the entire apparatus in order to fix the bolt. 

Ha...yah...that means more money. 

Which would have been useful as after I explained some of the symptoms I was experiencing when braking, they also said that my brake rotors were warped. They could see hot spots and such on them.

Again. Not a 'need to fix right now!" sort of issue.

And again...it's not an easy fix thing either. Having to take apart more of the brake system and such.

But if I did replace the rotors then they could also replace the bolt at the same time.

Still...

I wasn't quite certain how much I would be spending...so I had them hold off and such until I knew how much the rest of the thing was gonna be.

I'm guessing the tire rotation didn't cost anything? As they didn't mention a cost for that. 

But the alignment. Yah my tires were not aligned. They'd become a bit duck footed, facing in to each other.

Which is a change from the last time I got my tires aligned when they were facing out and away from each other. 

But they didn't mention anything else wrong so woot!

And while I could afford to do the alignment and the rotor replacement...

I decided to just do the alignment for now.

Because I wanted to see how much fixing the alignment changed the driving for the better.

No use fixing multiple potential problems if only one of them was the issue.

And while I know the rotors need to be replaced at some point. 

It appears that fixing my alignment has solved most of the major issues.

I can feel that driving is smoother. Even if it still gets a bit bumpy at times...it's hard to tell driving in the city streets when you're being super aware of everything lol.

I'll probably notice for sure when I'm doing freeway speeds and then slowing down for the exit. 

Still.

It feels good to have my old car running smoother again. 

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi