Her father offered to change her all-weather tires to the ice tires early in winter. He's done it for her before. He's accustomed to changing the tires, come the prospect of winter driving, on his own vehicles. He had taken all the tools he needed to do just that. But when he drove over and expected to do the work, she expressed her firm intention to have it done professionally. She'd take it to a garage herself, in the next little while, she said, and have it done. No big deal.

She wouldn't be persuaded otherwise. Understandable, given her father's age, and her unwillingness to have him exert himself unnecessarily. So, then he returned home without having achieved the purpose for the trip. And she of necessity took her vehicle in soon afterward to have her tires changed.

Some time afterward she noticed there were slight clunking sounds she couldn't identify, but she shrugged off any concern she had. Her vehicle was a tough little SUV, had an excellent reputation and she hadn't had any problems with it over the past few years; it was in fact, in almost-new condition. Well, not quite; driving constantly on country roads is harder on a vehicle than driving in an urban area. But it's been reliable.

She should of course, have taken the vehicle in for an inspection when it began sounding so clunky. It hadn't occurred to her to check the wheels. She wouldn't know what to check. But it wasn't just the tires that were changed back then, but the extra wheel mounts they were ;laced on as well. It's likely a man would have been more alert to the possibility that something should be checked out there, rather than simply ignore the problem.

The end result was that when she went out to do a little shopping yesterday afternoon, the vehicle suddenly broke down, wouldn't respond, and she was stuck there. She waited a half-hour until her boyfriend, who left work early to respond to her predicament, picked her up, arranged for a tow, and had the vehicle taken into a nearby garage. At the garage they diagnosed the problem. Whoever had changed the tires/wheels on the vehicle simply hadn't bothered sufficiently tightening the wheel bolts. They'd come looser over time. Until, in essence, one of the wheels more or less separated from its improperly bolted connection, and the vehicle  ceased functioning.

It was a nasty day to be stuck on the highway like that, with colder-than-normal temperatures and a driving wind with light snow flurries. No pride in workmanship among so-called professionals? Little wonder her father, and likely many other men double-check if they ever have work done by mechanics who are supposed to know what they're doing.