I finally picked my car up yesterday from the second of two repair shops that were working on it in the same day and I can finally say that it is at least starting to resemble my old car again. I was mortified the first time that I picked it up last week and it wasn’t braking properly and was pulling to one side. The body shop was saying that they had fixed everything that they could on it, but I was terrified that would be the permanent future state of the car. It was awful. All kinds of engine indicator lights had turned on: “Check Engine” and “VSC tracking” (whatever the heck that is). After a visit to the dealership for an alignment and some other repairs (some related to the accident, some not, plus some routine maintenance), I am starting to get happy with it again. I have always babied this car; it’s been taken to the dealership for routine maintenance and oil changes precisely according to the recommended schedule. I keep it pristinely clean inside. I am inordinately proud of this car and LOVE it. It’s the first car that I ever paid cash for and didn’t have to get a loan on. When I get a door ding or paint chip, I rush it to the body shop to have it fixed. The guy at the body shop (who presumably makes money off of my hyper-vigilance) actually told me once, “It’s never going to stay perfect, you know…it’s OK for it to have a couple of marks.” Silly man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 😉 Of course, I had completely forgotten about the windshield crack that happened just before the wreck that I hadn’t had a chance to get fixed yet, so that will have to be taken care of now. It happened on a gravelly road (piece of gravel flew up and hit it) in the middle of nowhere (on my way to TDS ranch for a party), so I will have to bear the responsibility for that cost myself, but I’ve now spent over $3000 on my car in the past week (I haven’t been reimbursed anything by the insurance company yet) and still have a windshield to go. The food on this blog may get really boring for a while….rice and beans, anyone?
I realized that I never did photos of the “damage”. The extent of the damage isn’t easily in photos, but here are some, anyway. This photo is of the underside of the car, and shows where the frame was slightly bent (this is only one side of the frame, but it was bent similar on the other side, as well):
This photo shows the bumper damage. The reason that there are some vertical marks is that the guy that hit me had a “brush guard” on the front bumper of his truck.
We did indulge in one extravagance yesterday that was unrelated to car repair: we bought “Rock Band” for the kids. A very fun game and I can tell already it’s going to turn into a huge “time suck” for our family – but that’s what summer’s for, right?