noise."Mid-November · 2:55am Nov 17th, 2021
It’s been one of those months . . . or at least one of those weekends.
I won’t bore you with all the details, but one of the highlights was my van getting a flat tire on a section of the highway where the exits were six or seven miles apart, so I couldn’t limp it to the off ramp.
Since I used to drive wrecker and know how stupid and inattentive people are, I pulled way off the shoulder, all the way into grass, and called AAA. After about a half hour, a service truck arrived. I’d already gotten out the tire-crank-down tool, so I wouldn’t be wasting everybody’s time looking for it when the truck was there.
Unfortunately, because I live in Michigan, the spare tire hoist was inoperative, and no amount of kicking or cursing Chrysler or that tire specifically got it to come down.* Nothing for it, just call AAA back and have them dispatch a flatbed. That was another 45 minutes, and ultimately I got home after midnight, and still had a flat tire (but at least I was home, so there’s that).
________________________________________
*and even if it had come down, the tire probably would have been flat
The good news is with two basically identical minivans in reserve, and a set of snow tires for this one, I had a tire to put on it, and now it’s a quarter of the way to having its set of snow tires. Actually, with as busy as we’ve been at work, I might get them on faster doing them one at a time in the driveway rather than taking it to the shop to put it on a hoist.
The other good news is that it slowed down a little bit at the shop; when I came in this morning there were actually empty spots in the parking lot, which was a change from the usual state of affairs.
Anyway, all that having been said, I’ve got a bunch of catching up to do on comments and a few PMs as well, for which I apologize. I’ll get there. 
Sorry to hear that but maybe it will get better
Gotta LoVe MI roads. (not insulting bc my fam had 2 flats on 75 near Detroit within a year.
Alex wants to hang out this Friday, what say you?
5608108
Maybe . . . I’d like to, but I’ve also got a couple things I need to deal with.
5608119 Well, think about it man. If you feel like it, you know how to reach us.
Glad you got back safely, AB despite the inconveniences.
At least it wasn't raining.
It's been 2 years since you updated Onto The Pony Planet.
Regrettably, it sounds like you are going to be too busy to update it in the foreseeable future
IMO, it's time to call it & shift it from "Incomplete" to "Canceled".
AFAIK, this will be the first story you've ever canceled but it's necessary.
Glad you got home, at least!
5608147 Absolutely, totally unnecessary and unwarranted. They'll get to it when they get to it.
Sucks, mate. At least you've got AAA.
Makes me glad my Subaru mounts its spare on the inside of the vehicle...
Never had a flat on it, though, and I do regularly (as in, once or twice a year) check/inflate the spare. TPMS gives me regular readouts on the rest. I did once deal with a flat, though... I wasn't the driver- my sister was- but it was a vehicle that I (later) drove quite a bit. GMC... but just like MI, the salt on the PA roads meant the spare hoist was inoperable. We ended up cutting it to get at the spare. Oh well, it wasn't a full spare anyways, so the full tire had to go in the trunk. (We didn't have AAA, but we do have roadside on our insurance)
That said, on my Subaru, I often don't worry about snow tires- I just get some good all-season tires, and be done with it. Which means I don't have anything but the spare to put on it if something goes pear-shaped... (At least it's a full spare, so that's a headache I don't have to worry too much about)
My dad's last car was a Mazda compact pickup. This was the first time he encountered a) a compact spare that b) was mounted under the vehicle.
So he went down to the dealer, ordered a spare wheel with tire, put an eye-bolt in the bed and chained it to that with a padlock.
Unicorns have an advantage when it comes to avoiding getting too very drunk. The more tipsy the unicorn, the harder it is for them to hold their drink steady in their magic. At least a couple of drinks before they would black out, they are completely unable to use their magic to take another sip. While yes, they could use their mouths and hooves, it is typically not something a drunk unicorn would think of.
No worries on the delays here, at least on my part, and good luck with catching up and general busyness. :)
And aye, glad the biggest problem from that flat tire on the highway seems to have been the time lost to it.
5608167
Damn right.
I was trying to remember what the zigzag pattern on the Michelin zero air, sprung tyre mae me think of, and then it was an article about paper diaphrams for holding cryogenic pipes steady in rockets from NASA. Or at least the display was paper, they might use titanium class paper or metal etc depending on requirements?
Thing is with solid spring flex tyres, how do they wear, and more importantly, what happens when they get damaged, and break?
Meanwhile, I was stuck at home with a nasty sinus infection.
5608105
Hopefully yeah. Sooner or later.
5608107
Yeah, they’re not the best. Although funnily enough they’ve gone on a paving binge in my small town the last few years, and the roads where we used to test drive cars to listen for noises they made over bumps have all been fixed. They could have left us with one section of bad road, darn it.
5608125
Thank you!
Yeah, it wasn’t great, but it certainly could have gone worse. And at least it’s only a flat tire and not hitting a deer, let’s say.
5608126
That’s true. It was cold, though, but since the van still ran, I stayed plenty warm.
That does remind me, though, I need to put the winter kit in the van (warm clothes and stuff, just in case).
5608152
Thank you!
5608147
Hasn’t been two years yet. Year and a half, which is still of course much longer than it should have been.
It’s not nearly to that point. I’ve got stuff that’s sat for longer.
Nope, Scootaloo Finds a Truck in the Everfree Forest (it’s tagged ‘on hiatus’ and may or may not ever be finished).
5608153
Yup, and that’s why I’ve got AAA. Incidentally, they’ve got a new app for showing the wrecker your location on a map and putting in what kind of service you need, etc., and it’s honestly terrible. I’d rather talk to a real person, even if I have to wait a couple minutes on hold.
5608163
That’s the better way to do it, although they really couldn’t on the Dodge vans with the stow-and-go, there was no space big enough to fit a spare inside the van.
I think I check the inflation pressure whenever the van’s up on a hoist, but I haven’t been operating the winch and that’s on me. (And I might not have been checking the tire pressure, with all the various Covid restrictions/closures and an abundance of caution, I’ve driven the van a lot less than usual in the last couple years.
Most of my pickups have had the spare tire removed from its original location (if there was still one left) and put in the bed.
Even on that, snow tires would make a difference. Their rubber compounds and extra siping make them super grippy on cold and icy pavement. I tested out an AWD CTS-V with snow tires in the snow one time, and just to see what it would do, I floored it at a stop sign and it didn’t break loose a bit. Heck, I couldn’t even kick the rear end of my Grand Marquis out on slick roads when it had snow tires on it, and I can tell you that the car wasn’t helping me any; the rear springs were weak and both rear shocks were blown.
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4a86fc0f-4f13-49dd-8c34-7fc231d6c209/d7r5m2s-2f6b615f-77a6-416d-9264-aa5d89067a18.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzRhODZmYzBmLTRmMTMtNDlkZC04YzM0LTdmYzIzMWQ2YzIwOVwvZDdyNW0ycy0yZjZiNjE1Zi03N2E2LTQxNmQtOTI2NC1hYTVkODkwNjdhMTguanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.gYKImwijhE1265cH19NsTv85D7L9g5LCmEDSAt2d31g
(That’s the car, to give you an idea how nice it was overall)
5608167
Pretty much all pickups for the last 40+ years have had the spare mounted underneath on some kind of arrangement.
All of my S-10s had the cable broken and the spare tire missing . . . must have been a few years in the 90s when it was dangerous to drive behind a S-10. I did the same, although with a junkyard rim. Also I didn’t bother padlocking it, because that was the kind of truck even a thief would stay away from.
5608204
I bet at least one genius unicorn has though of using a straw.
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5608594
Nice.
I've heard snow tires are only super awesome in the snow for about 1/4 of their tread life, after which they're worse than all-season tires... And using all-season tires on an already very capable vehicle with a driver as skilled as myself (on a previous one that didn't have an impressive traction control system, or indeed traction control at all, I once drifted it through the heart of a city), lets me not worry about swapping out wheels twice a year, just rotate the tires regularly.
For spare placement... Especially on larger vehicles, which start having larger spares, it starts being impossible to mount a full spare conveniently on the inside of the vehicle. There's got to be a reason Jeeps like mounting it on the rear door, sometimes with a cover but sometimes not, and semis either park one on the catwalk on the back of the tractor or put two (or a supersingle) on a rack under the trailer... Or both, but neither is "inside" the vehicle.
5608268
Yes, that’s true and I’m grateful for that. Technically, I’m out the cost of a tire, too, but then I’ve got four good ones that are the same size and on the same rims on another van that isn’t roadworthy, so it’s not like I actually have to buy a new one. Honestly, it’s the time lost that’s the most annoying part, but nothing I can do about that. A disproportionate amount of things have popped up recently that take more time than they should and which I can’t put off for a more convenient time. Ah, well, that’s life.
5608350
I would assume that the tread wears out like a normal tire would, and that there could be failure of the center bits but that would be an uncommon failure.
I know that there have been attempts to develop them for on-road cars and trucks but as far as I know that hasn’t worked out. Too many disadvantages to the design to overtake the simply pneumatic tire. However, for some off-road applications, tires like that are useful. For example, one scrapyard I used to visit had some kind of special tires on their front end loader, since otherwise it’d have a flat or two every day from all the metal it ran over. You could see all sorts of scrap sticking out of the tires.
5608597
Depends on the tread material . . . Bridgestone Blizzaks have (or did have) some sort of multi-layer compound to address this problem. I can tell you that the ones I’ve got have served through many winters, although this one will be the last. As long as you’re religious about changing them out; they don’t last long on dry pavement. And they do make your fuel economy slightly worse, since they have higher rolling resistance.
Yeah, you do run into space considerations with a full-size spare. I would bet the Crown Vics were the last American passenger car to offer a full-sized spare inside the trunk--AFAIK the police package had that all the way to the end. My 80s Suburban has it inside, but that’s because the fuel tank is where you’d normally put a spare.
On the trunk/tailgate is an convenient option for a bigger tire than could fit anywhere else, although it comes with the drawback that any rear-end collision is going to be far more expensive, since the spare’s going to be an excellent battering ram into the rear hatch/tailgate/whatever.
5608595
Before he bought that truck, the last two cars he'd bought were a Chevy Suburban and a Chevy pickup. In the mid 1970's.
"We keep our vehicles a good, long time" is actually written down in our Family Traditions.
5608592
Well, I like the story & would DEARLY like to see an update.
It's just that (based on comments) it's not your favorite. (You said you'd leave out the Trixie subplot, for instance. )
IMO, you're busy enough that you're unlikely to be doing a LOT of writing and there's stuff you'd rather write. The combo doesn't look good for an update.
I've already got down votes on that comment. Presumably, they want updates as well.
5608596
Liquor through a straw? That pony must also use a knife and fork to eat a pizza.
5608630
Possibly. Though unicorns are the only type of pony that can conceivably use cutlery without abnormal difficulty. Celestia know, they're always the tribe depicted as valuing table manners in fanworks.
5608598
:)
Aye, sometimes life's like that. I hope things improve for you soon, though!
5608605
That’s sort of true in my family as well, although I’m kinda the outlier. Then again, instead of buying something new and taking good care of it for as long as possible (giving Michigan, it’s usually rust that does them in), I buy the cheapest thing I can find that will meet my needs, sometimes literally on its way to the junkyard, and hold it together as long as possible before its inevitable failure of one kind or another. Case in point, my $80 S-10 that I put a quarter million miles on. By the end, more of it was original than you’d think, but it was kept alive by six or seven donor trucks, mostly to keep ahead of the rust.
5608630
I don’t remember which story of mine it is, but I did mention in one a pony on Earth drinking wine with a straw.
EDIT: or maybe it wasn’t on Earth, but I’m pretty sure there was a human in it. Sadly, given my catalog, that doesn’t limit the search all that much.
5608679
I dunno, Pinkie Pie’s pretty good with knives.
derpicdn.net/img/2013/6/10/344981/large.jpg
This is true, and now that I think about it, I wonder why? They could just levitate the food up to their mouth with no need for utensils.
5608693
Thank you!
Well, if nothing else, I’m visiting family in California over Thanksgiving, so that’ll be nice.
5608629
I don’t mean to come off as being rude or abrasive, or for that matter dismissive because you’re right that people want updates. Lots of people want updates. I want updates, I want to finish that story . . . and other stories; if you look through my catalog you’ll see a number of unfinished stories, and I’m not including anthologies (even if they’re not tagged as such) or other catchalls that are ‘whatever fits goes there’ stories. I mean things like Stained Glass, Como Salsa Por Los Tacos, A Gift from Celestia, Onto the Pony Planet, Convention Hotel (although that might wind up drifting into anthology territory), Field Notes from Equestria. And in fact I have a lot of other stories that haven’t been seen, ones that have been in progress sometimes for years, and which I’m not posting until they’re done since I’ve learned that life doesn’t always go like I plan, and sometimes for whatever reason, things fall by the wayside.
See, I don’t get paid for this. It’s a hobby I do in my free time and I share with y’all because you like my stories, but it doesn’t pay the bills, it doesn’t do the laundry or cook dinner; I have to go to a real job for that and since the start of the pandemic my real job has gotten more stressful than it was, to the point where I’m now working 60+ hours a week and we’re still behind, and I’ll be honest it takes me a while after work to get into the mood for writing, especially for writing something complex like OPP which has lots of moving parts.
And I’m surely not alone in this among FimFic authors. Would I like a regular schedule which, in turn, would give my readers a regular schedule? You bet I would. But that’s unfortunately not reality at the moment.
Given the length of time it’s been in progress, the audience has changed, the audience’s relation to the show and fandom has changed, and both my real situations in life and my writing skills have changed. Yes, you are correct that if I were to go back and do it again I would make some changes, but then I can say that with a few fics of mine. I’ve learned a lot as I wrote it, and the story has slowly shifted from a sort of standard action/sci-fi story to more of a Slice of Life over time and I think that’s okay. But it does make juggling some of the plot points more difficult . . .
Oh, you can always count on me doing lots of writing, because I can toss off cute fluff like nobody’s business, but in terms of the more serious stuff, yeah, that takes longer and that takes more time than I currently have. Admittedly, winters tend to be better for writing since some of the other things I have to do--like mow my lawn--don’t have to be done.
5608903
I doubt this is new to you but the occasion demands it:
5608906
IMO, they invented table manners & silverware to show their superiority to the other races.
After all, they can hold it with their magic FAR easier than the other races can hold silverware
5608907
:)
Ah, have a good trip!
5608906
Anytime Pinkie Pie is used as an example of earth ponies as a whole, I rather think that invalidates itself.
Good point about unicorns being able to levitate food itself. Realistically, I'd imagine, it's because the showrunners didn't think of that. In my own head, I think it's because unicorns like to do it to tweak the muzzles of non-unicorns. Similar to how the British upper crust wanted to differentiate their speech from the commoners and began speaking differently... and then the whole nation followed suit.