Today has been quite a day. Last night on the way home, I noticed that the ride was getting much worse. There has been a vibration coming from the front of the pickup for some time; normally it happened when I got over 65 MPH, but last night it was happening above 55 MPH.
When I took it in a couple of weeks ago to get the oil changed, I asked the shop to take a look at the front end. They said the front tires were separating and I would have to take the pickup somewhere else, since they no longer dealt with tires. I looked at the tires and they had a lot of tread on them, so I put off taking the pickup to a tire repair place. (The tires do have 50 to 60 thousand miles on them. I would like them to get more but 50 thousand miles seems like a good number of miles.)
I took the pickup over to the Firestone dealership near here and had them inspect the front end of the pickup. They came to the same conclusion as the previous shop, so I had the tires replaced. They were not able to get to the repair until this morning. A little while later I got a second call from the shop, saying that the brakes needed repairing also.
So the short task at the tire shop ended up requiring about 6 hours and 700 dollars. I guess I will have to keep my old pickup another several years after putting that much money into it! It still does pretty good for a 12 year old pickup.
Tonight I took it for a test drive to the NXNW Brewery and Restaurant, then went to the gym. It handled real well on the freeway at 65 MPH. I had forgotten how nice it is when everything is working right.