Re-tired

[unixronin]

No job, no money, no ...  Oh.  Wait.  That's "unemployed."

Re-tired is the car, not me.  Thanks to my folks sending us a cash infusion, we have brand new tires on the car.  I'd been planning to use my consulting fee from dafydd to buy tires, but it turns out it wouldn't have been enough.  Dodge chose to put an oddball size tire (P225/55R17) on our Intrepid R/T, and there are very few suitable tires in that size.  The original-equipment Goodyear Eagle LS tires are relatively inexpensive, but they're mediocre in the wet and reportedly terrible in even light snow, so it didn't seem like a good idea putting them on a car that may shortly be driven cross-country in the middle of winter.

Anyway, thanks to my folks, who have been enormously supportive of us, we now have four brand-new Michelin Pilot Sport A/S tires, which by all accounts are remarkable in rain and snow to the point of verging on revolutionary, due to a combination of tread design, new tire molding technology, and new high-silica tread compounds.  I can now stop worrying every time the weather turns nasty.  We were down to just under 3/32" on the old tires, which - I learned last night - is legally bald in ten states.  On the other hand, expected treadlife from the Eagle LS is 32,000 to 33,000 miles, and we got 45,500 out of them, so we must be doing something right.  (If we can keep it up, and the treadwear ratings are representative, we should get almost 50,000 from the Michelins.)

Re-tirement is, in this case, a Good Thing.  (Unemployment, on the other hand, continues to suck aircraft carriers through drinking straws.)