Strange things are happening. Again.
Yesterday. I’m driving. It’s cold and rainy and dark. At 11AM. And I’m thinking: “We gave away 13,000 digital tire gauges this summer, and now that it’s cold and wet, nobody’s going to be checking their tire pressure.”
So I pull into the parking lot at the Starbucks closest to Jasper’s Saturday hockey game. 10 minutes later I’m getting back into the car, lattes in hand, and I notice that four cars over a guy driving an SUV is kneeling by his front tire. Then he attaches a little device the size of a shoe box to his tire, a wire leading into his car. He’s pumping up his tires. I find myself standing, watching, in the rain — my coffee is getting cold. Some random guy just happens to be checking and regulating his tire pressure minutes after I’d concluded that that just wouldn’t happen.
Then, two cars over, a guy calls to me. “Hey, see that? Cool, eh?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Did he have a flat tire?”
“No. He’s just optimizing his tire pressure. Did you know that you can save money and make your car more efficient by keeping your tires properly inflated?”
“Really?” I decided to play dumb. I was actually dumbfounded.
“Yeah! It makes a difference.”
I decided to test this a bit.
“Do you have a tire gauge?” I asked.
“Yeah, a digital keychain tire gauge I got this summer at Canadian Tire.”
I nearly cried. But I still didn’t let on… He continued:
“Keeping your tire pressure up really matters. Now I do it all the time,” he said. “And so should you.”
I looked into my car where a pile of old Psst! One Change: Fuel campaign posters were mangled and scattered across the back seat.
“Thanks!” I said.
Maybe he thought he’d given me a good tip. What I really got was validation.
