My recent flat tire experience

Dave of Living Out Here recently said something on FB about a flat tire experience.  I recently had one, too, which was quite annoying.

When I bought my current vehicle, I looked under the seat to see where the jack was, and saw it was there.  Unfortunately--and this was entirely my own fault for being assumptive--I did not remove it to verify that every piece was included.

So I had a flat tire.  It wasn't totally flat yet, but getting there.  I went to change the tire and discovered that two pieces of the jack handle were missing--one of the extension pieces and the handle/lug wrench.  So I managed to, shall we say, acquire an extension piece and a handle/lug wrench that would fit the existing pieces so that I could change the tire.  The handle/lug wrench I acquired did fit the lug nuts on all the tires.

Except the spare.  Whoever had this vehicle before I did had, for some reason, changed the nuts on the spare to a different size (larger), so I couldn't remove the spare from its mount.  WTF?!

So I drove to that big tire-fixin' place on Rigsby which I can't remember the name of just now and found that my going-flat tire was pretty well worn out anyway, and I bought a used tire to replace it.  I didn't feel to bad about this; it's par for the course with tires.  They all have to be replaced eventually and if this was an original, it had over 100,000 miles on it.

I asked the tire guy if they could sell me a couple of new lug nuts for my spare.  He said yes.  But he had a hard time finding the right size.  It took him four tries before he finally got the right ones.

So, the new tire cost me $35 and the two new lug nuts for the spare were $1.50 each (I splurged for the more expensive lug nuts).  I had no problem with the expense.  I think I got off easy.

But those missing jack pieces and the odd-sized lug nuts?  I say again, WTF?!