Car Saga

It looks like I have yet to blog on the story of my car.  Black Monday (the day our company let 500 of us go, including me), was the 16th of November.  On the 22nd of November, my honey totaled my car.

I should start out by saying that except for a bit of a sore neck, Cavan was fine.  The airbags did not even deploy.  What happened was this:  some driver decided to cut off a car, which caused that guy to slam on his brakes, which caused the guy behind him to plow into him, the next car to slam into that one and then Cavan slid under the back of that pickup.  So, Cavan was the 4th into the accident.

My car was an eight year old Pontiac G5.  The damage was really just that the hood of the car accordioned up.  At least that was all that it looked like.  Then the tow truck drivers got involved.  What happens when you lift the front of a pickup and pull it forward when it has a car part way under it?  It pulls the whole front off the little car!  Most of the damage to our car was done by the tow truck.

To add insult to injury, the police would not let Cavan call CAA (the Canadian equivalent to AAA) and he had to let a tow truck on the scene take the car.  This resulted in our car being held hostage for nine days!  Cavan called the tow truck driver the Monday to have the car released, but he refused.  We tried again on Tuesday, but the guy insisted that someone had to be there to fill in forms.  I had to be in the city on the Wednesday, so I went to this place that actually had my car locked in a fenced in area.  I was told that he had to be sure he gave the car to the owner. He had no forms, I just put a declaration, freeform, on a folder and he never asked for ID, license or even ownership.

Our insurance company was unable to get a truck to pick the car up that day and the next day was US Thanksgiving, and the tow trucks were dispatched out of the US, so another day went by.  On the Friday, the insurance tow truck showed up and the guy insisted on over $1000 to release the car!  The insurance company wouldn’t pay it, but later that day, they negotiated a price.  The weekend went by and so did Monday.  Tuesday, my car was finally moved to where it was supposed to be.

In the meantime, we had a rental car and anticipating a new car, we rented a Hyundai Elantra, which is what I expected to replace the old car with, at some point.  The mechanic at CarStar was working on the estimate, but up until now, everyone told us it was not worth fixing, so we decided to take advantage of the Black Friday pricing.  The deals ran until November 30th, so we showed up on the 30th.  There were only two cars left that had that deal and I chose the red Elantra GLS with the tinted windows, discounted at $5000 off!

So, new retirement, new car!  It is still too busy to know what retirement is all about, but perhaps after Christmas, I’ll figure it out!

Here’s wishing all of you happy new adventures!  God Bless!