I didn’t even know anything was wrong, until I heard a grinding sound as I was exiting the carwash. But I had no idea where the noise was coming from. I definitely knew something was wrong when the guy across the parking lot stopped what he was doing and pointed at the car. My first instinct was too look at the roof; maybe one of the brushes got caught somehow? But the roof looked just fine. Sparkling clean, in fact.
Then I saw it. My bumper. On the ground. About 5 feet behind the car. Bits of plastic and wires. “No!”, I thought, “I just had that replaced a few months ago!” But looking at the rear of the Altima, my bumper was still there.
I’d driven clean over my front bumper, grinding it on the ground as I went.
The guy who pointed at me offered to take pictures on his disposable camera and mail them to me; I thought they might sell disposable cameras in the gas station, and while I was inside asking he took off. They didn’t, so I bought a disposable camera (the aptly named Kodak FunSaver) from the nearby grocery store instead and took the shots myself.
When I purchased The Altima in the summer of 2002, it had clearly been in an accident; according to the previous owner, the front and rear bumpers were damaged while the car was being shipped back from Germany where her fiance had been stationed at a military base. She figures it (or another vehicle) must have not been secured properly on the boat, and a slow-motion rolling collision ensued. I checked the VIN out and there’s no history of accident claims made against it, so I believe her. Guess the carwash just pushed it past its limit. Just in case, though: this was the Ultimate Wash from a Chevron. Caveat emptor.
The woman in line for a carwash behind me ran and got her money back.
Anyhow, I’ve got a new bumper on order; that’ll be $224 plzkthanx and should be in Monday. On top of that I need it painted silver, and installed, which will probably bump me up to the $500 range. I should point out that it’s just the polycarbonate shell of the bumper which came off, not the actual bumping infrastructure, which is still intact (though exposed). On the plus side, I can see my windshield wiper fluid reservoir now; perhaps I’ll be able to repair the crack in it (probably a product of the aforementioned collision).
At the gas station, the attendant strongly suggested I take my bumper with me lest I lose it; considering it was totally broken, I wouldn’t have been heartbroken. Anyhow, I didn’t want to litter, so it’s in my back seat. Tonight, I had the somewhat surreal experience of thinking I had to make sure I didn’t brake too hard, lest my bumper smack me in the back of the head.

Update, Fri, Nov 5th, 10:07pm EST: Alright, the videos should be back online! Let me know how things go, esp if transfer speeds are better/worse or if I’m over my bandwidth quota. 🙂 –K

Dialup connections, beware! This is a huge page, be sure you’ve got a coffee handy if you choose to click that “MORE…” link. Onward!

(more…)

Well, what can I say? Last night, between chatting with Brian, Davin, Alex and Cam over instant messenger I worked on my post about the weekend from around until 10pm, and tired of visiting webpages for my election information, I flipped on the tube. Having the very-most minimal cable possible (just enough to get a discount on my internet service), I didn’t have CNN or C-SPAN or any of the major news services, so I just flipped it to SNN6, one of the local channels, figuring they’d give me an update. What I found surprised me — they were going through who had won the position of county sheriff for Charlotte. What about the national election going on?! But that’s how it works down here. When you go to vote, you’re not just voting on Bush or Kerry or Nader; you’re voting on judges and sheriffs and all sorts of stuff. Seems unusual, but I think it’s related to the whole balance of power thing.
Anyway I ended up settling on WEDU, a PBS affiliate, and watched the what I’m guessing was a special edition of Jim Lehrer’s Newshour. The coverage actually turned out to be much better than I had expected; they discussed the current results, and in-between talked on things I was curious about, like how the geographic area someone grows up could affect which way they’ll vote. You know, left-coast, that kind of thing? Well one theory was, the closer you live to water, the more likely your vote will be liberal. Interesting idea. It holds in most of the situations I can think of, except the east-coast of Canada, which I believe is typically conservative. Another theory was that the higher the population density, the more likely they are to be liberal. Bigger cities == more likely to be democratic. Interesting idea, and I think it holds true. Except for all those cities in Texas. Hmmm.
Anyhow I shut off the TV around midnight; the coverage, plus dinner, plus maybe that beer made me pretty sleepy. Woke up at 5:47 without the assistance of my alarm. “Well,” I thought to myself, “self, why not check how the election is going”. It’s looking like Bush is probably going to get re-elected. The Bush campaign has already declared victory, though Bush isn’t scheduled to speak until later today. The Kerry camp is definitely not certain the election is over. I’m don’t know. It’s looking like another four years of incoherent speeches and dogmatic foreign policy. Guess we’ll find out soon.