Monday, March 24, 2008

My Monday Bender

TUESDAY UPDATE: Moving on from this. I have removed all those absolutely dreadful headrests attached to the back seat---three to be exact---that blocked my view out the back window and got a pillow on the driver's seat so I'm driving an inch or two higher and can now have an unobstructed view.

UPDATE: These guys aren't having the best of days either. This country can't imagine what would happen if they quit, even for a little while.


There are some days when life lessons come at me so fast I honestly want to have myself temporarily locked up in jail. Today has been one of those days.

I consider myself a good driver and drive all over the country. By the grace of God, I have never had an accident and only a rare speeding ticket every five to ten years (once on the plains of Eastern Colorado late at night when I let her rip with Bruce Springstein blasting on all thrusters and a female Highway Patrol hiding in a culvert waiting for the next greater fool, which turned out to be me). I got a parking ticket in Stroudsburg, PA last fall at 4:55 p.m. when I parked to run and get directions.

In addition to being a decent law abiding driver, I also fancy myself quite good at parallel parking and backing up. That is until today, while in a totally different car with an automatic transmission and standing completely still waiting for a left turn signal. I mean, how much trouble can one woman get into standing still?

Evidently, quite a bit. Something happened so bazaar that I simply can't write about it yet. I'll be back later or early tomorrow to tell a story on myself and a lesson I learned in a car I'm renting while the standard transmission on my Ford Explorer ( 244,448 miles, and yes I know I need to start thinking about a newer car) is being worked on.

This is going to be a fairly expensive life lesson and I'm not in the best of humor at the moment. But I'm glad nobody got hurt and that eventually I might be able to laugh at all this. Besides taking responsibility for my obvious mistake, I'm also going to take car manufacturers to task for what I consider to be absurd design features in all new cars today. My car is 9 years old and drives like a dream. I should have known about these new features, but didn't. And now I'm singing the blues.

Hope you're having a better day.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You just reminded me of the time I backed into my garage door as it was going up. I hit the accelerator instead of the brake, but I was able to stop fast enough just to dent it. I scratched the Explorer up a little, but it had 150,000 miles on it at that time so I didn't really care.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, when it's your own car or garage, I wouldn't have cared either....but unfotunately this wasn't my car....

I'm just sick about this....

Unknown said...

Don't be too tough on yourself. There was only one perfect person--that's why insurance was invented. ;-)

Unknown said...

Oh Web, so sorry about this unfortunate "accident". Life lessons can really be a "pain in the rear" while learning them!

Oh and thanks for the link about the truckers. I hadn't really given them much thought and I have a couple of cousins who do that for a living. Bless their hearts!

God bless ya'!