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Today ended up being an off day, minus a 15-minute rush job. I still feel like I was hit by a bus, but I really wanted to deal with my truck since I want to run errands this week. My pay had surprisingly landed (PayPal transfers to Mexico accounts seem faster than to Canadian accounts!) so I walked to Autozone first thing this morning. There, I bought their cheapest battery that would fit my truck. I was told I would have to pay $350 more than the quoted price because I was not turning in the old one for recycling, but if I came back by Friday with the battery, they would reimburse me the $350.

A cheap Uber ride later and I was home, where I texted my mechanic to let him know I had a battery and to see if he’d had any luck finding me a used tire.

We met up some hours later and he said he hadn’t found used tire but did I have a spare? Hmm. Good question! But if I did, surely it would be ancient…

Turns out the spare was bolted to the under carriage. There was no way to really inspect it there and the mechanism for releasing it was so rusty there was nothing to do but destroy it. I gave the go ahead, of course.

To my immense surprise, the spare was only about seven years old and in apparently great shape. It finally hit me — when I had new tires put on in Assiniboia ahead of my first trip to Mexico, the guys at Kal Tire must have swapped my older spare with the best of the tires they had pulled! My mechanic here said there’s no way I am to drive outside of the city except maybe to Progreso with that tire, but he’s sure that I’ll be fine tooling around with it just in Mérida. He is still going to look for a used one that’s newer. But in the meantime, I’m good to go. Total cost of installing the new battery and the spare, $200! I’m telling you, having a good mechanic next door is fantastic!

You only need three wheels, right?

I went for a test drive back to Autozone, where I got my $350 back without any fuss. By the way, I really love that Autozone (Prolongación Paseo de Montejo/Calle 1-H) — customer service is really good. I know there is at least one store closer where I could have bought the battery, but the price was the same and the service when I went to get a quote wasn’t awesome. So I prefer to support the store where I shopping is always a pleasant experience.

So now I have my truck back to get groceries tomorrow, which will likely also be an off day. That’s okay — I’ve been pushing it very hard and this cold just won’t go. Hopefully, it will be quiet again tonight and I’ll get another good night of sleep.

And with that, I’m off shortly to meet a friend for tacos, the only thing that could get me off this couch again tonight. 🙂

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Just shy of 8:30 this morning, I heard the Pepsi truck driving down my street then a BOOM.

I ran out and, sure enough, it had struck my truck and punched a hole in one of my tires. Despite multiple neighbours coming out and yelling at the truck to stop, it got to the corner, then hit a hard turn onto 21 and raced to 60, skipping its usual stops. There’s no way they didn’t know they did something bad.

I went to the expat group I trust for advice — lots of long-timers here who live in the real world as well as Mexicans so I knew I’d get advice for how such things are handled by locals. I had one who did ask if a burst tire was worth a driver losing his job at Christmas, but she was drowned out by the advice to call 911 and request police. This was a hit and run, plain and simple, and the value of the damage was immaterial.

I felt like I lost all my Spanish when the 911 operator picked up, but he repeated everything back to me and understood me perfectly. He promised to send police but, as expected, police never turned up. Even if they had, to make an official-official claim, a denuncia, you have to go in person to an agency called the Fiscalía, which handles the actual investigations.

I then called my insurance company and was shocked that they had no one who spoke English who could help me since I have “Gringo insurance.” I knew I only had third-party liability, but I thought they might be able to liaise with Pepsi’s insurance. Nope, there was nothing they could do for me (the expected answer).

I then called Pepsi’s local office and the person who picked up the phone took my info and said someone would call me back.

They did call me back some time later and even found someone who speaks English at about the level I speak Spanish. So we had a Spanglish conversation. It was clear Pepsi was giving me the brush-off as they said they could not do anything since I did not have the truck license plate number. This was a regularly scheduled truck on a regular route so there’s no way they didn’t know which truck and which driver was involved. I got a name and number to call back the next time I saw the truck. *insert shrug emoji!*

Sometime after this, I got hold of my mechanic and he said he’d have a look. He was quite peeved on my behalf, saying the Pepsi driver has caused damage to others before and that, really, he’d deserve my filing a denuncia. He later confirmed that there was no other damage and that he will find me a cheap used tire. So that’s as far as I was willing to take things seeing as I’d lost half a day of work and a used tire won’t break the bank.

The day was not a write-off, however, as I got in some good practice for the day I have a life or death emergency. 🙂 I’m glad I finally have a support network here that can show me how things are done here, not how they “should” be done.