Adventure #1 with my new Prius

Through the decades I've learned to ignore a lot of sensors in my cars. First and foremost the check engine light, which sometimes seemed like a Christmas tree light in a succession of Subarus. Like the economist Paul Kasriel, who famously used duct tape to obscure the check engine light on his Outback, I got on with my life and had the garage look at it when a service interval rolled around.

Mary's Prius had a tire pressure indicator on for more or less the last year or two of its life. I'd try to pump up the tires, monitor the pressure, and figure out which one was the problem, to no avail. We lived with it. And I've seen the tire pressure indicator wax and wane when temperatures change quickly or when you go up or down a mountain. Makes sense, sort of.

But I was for sure annoyed when the tire pressure light came on in my brand-spanking new Prius PHEV. That did not seem right. Still, we'd had a night or two when the temperature changed 30-40 degrees overnight. I figured that was what was going on. I had an important meeting at noon yesterday with a client and was going to address it after that.

Murphy's legislator had other plans. As I left my office and was headed to Merritt's to buy sandwiches to head to my client's house, a new indicator came on showing me the tire pressures in each of my 4 tires (there's some progress in the new car!) and that the pressure in my front left was 14 of a desired 36. Then it was 13. Not good. By the time I got to Merritt's it was flat. 

I will spare you the full play by play, except to note that at dinner the other night Jonathan had pointed out that the new Prii lacked spare tires, to which I responded "I never get flat tires." That was my fatal error.

Turns out, there is a little pump back there where the spare should be with a bottle of some kind of solution that can patch a tire if it's not too bad. Mine proved to be not too bad. After Lyfting to my client lunch I went back later in the afternoon, applied the modern technology and drove to a garage. Fingers crossed I didn't destroy my rim driving a mile or so.

Then I walked from my garage back to Merritt's, where I had left my other car (Mary having been too deep in her internet inhalation to go with me on this mission). I took the Battle Creek trail for the first part of the walk. I was passed by, amongst others, a UNC student out running barefoot on the rocky trail.