Monday, December 31, 2007

The $700 wrong turn

I hate driving in places I'm not familiar with. I also really like having a specific route to every place that I go regularly. To get to work I drive on the exact same roads every day. I like the familiarity of it. I like knowing where I'm going and what the road will do. I like knowing when the right lane is going to go away. I'm just one of those people. I sometimes think that's stupid because what's the worst that can happen? A wrong turn? And who does that hurt? Well, here's my justification.

Josh called today.

"That's it, we're getting a new car. I hate this car, I'm not driving it anymore. We need a truck or an SUV. Something with 4 Wheel Drive. I'm not doing this anymore."
"Calm down. What happened?" I ask, starting to worry. Josh never loses his temper like this.
"I just slid into the curb and the alignment is WAY off and it's shaking like crazy." He says. As calmly as possible, trying not to yell at me.
"Are you OK? Physically OK?" I ask.
"Yes. Just (*&#$^!@%) mad." He refrains from swearing, but I can hear it anyway.
"Take it to the shop and see how much damage we're talking about before we call it quits. Worst case scenario we buy a new car today. I bet we can get a good deal because it's the last day of the month and the last day of the year. We probably need an SUV anyway. So maybe we'll just go buy one. But let's see how much damage first. Can you take it to a shop?"
"mutter mutter grumble grumble. I'll call you when I know something." He grudgingly replies.

Later I found out the whole story. Instead of taking victory road down to Beck street to go North, he took a wrong turn and headed down the neighborhood of death and destruction. The roads hadn't been plowed and they were ice. He was going SLOW (like not even 5 miles an hour) but the roads are SOO steep and slick that he couldn't stop and slammed into the curb.

Fortunately his co-worker rescued him, took him to his meeting, and to the Egbert's house where he was allowed to pick up a car to borrow for a couple of days.

One might say that wrecking 2 cars a year is a lot more than your average person's quota. But I think that it's only fair. Josh drives probably 10-15 times more than the average person. If you figure the Average Number of Hitting Stuff In Cars Incidents (ANHSICI) per hours driven, that means he should have 10-15 times more accidents than your average person per year. So, by this simple formula, 2 wrecks in 1 year is really like 2 wrecks in 10-15 years for your normal person. Not bad. I'd be willing to bed that all of you have done something destructive to your car at least once every 7 years. And that's OK.

For now we're glad to have a car to borrow, and we'll think about replacing my car later. It's all paid for, so we might just buy a new one. But, I HATE to go into more debt than we already have for our house. Plus knowing that we wreck a car twice a year, pretty much means that I don't wanna buy anything too nice. It's just going to get wrecked anyway.

2 comments:

  1. Wow. Why does Josh drive so much? Is it for his job? That really sucks about your car, but hopefully it's all fixed now. I don't blame you for not wanting to buy too nice of a car if it's just going to get wrecked in six months either. :)

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  2. Yup. He drives to all of the Redbox's all over the place. Our poor cars get beat up.

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