Hey, Who Moved the Pole?

One of the un-highlights of my vacation last week was an unfortunate encounter with the pole in my parking garage. We parked adjacent to one of these pillars and I have spent many cautious moments backing out of the space, always mindful of that annoying column which always appears to be closer than I think. Oddly enough, my stupid little accident didn't occur while backing out. I pulled into the garage from the harsh 100 degree sunlight. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, I immediately pull off my sunglasses as the immediate light-to-dark contrast is quite jarring. I swung wide to pull into my space and away from the offending pole. Not wide enough.

Scrape, scrape, crunch. The Rice Krispie trinity of auto accidents. When you do this, there's always that little 15 second delay where you think that it wasn't as bad as it sounded.

It was as bad as it sounded. Since most cars these days are covered in plastic, there were two panels on the passenger side of my 4Runner that were now partially disengaged from the rest of the vehicle. As I surveyed the ruins, my father once again could be heard in my right ear from his heavenly perch on my shoulder. A beyond-the-grave "I told you so."

Given that I did this on the cusp of the Labor Day weekend and nobody except Jerry Lewis works, I needed a fast ghetto fix. For the uneducated, a ghetto fix is the repair of anything with some duct tape. I drove to a small auto body shop near my home and he did the trick to get me through till Tuesday.

By the time Tuesday ran around, the excessive heat had pretty much melted what duct tape was left on my car. I went to my Toyota dealer's collision department. Once again, I am hearing my father's voice. "Don't go to a dealer. They rip you off."

My estimater was a Japanese guy who specialized in using broken English to assess my damage. While he did not have a mastery of the English language, he certainly could wield a sharp pencil. He wrote down everything as if he was solving the DaVinci Code. When he moved to the side of the car that was undamaged and kept writing, I told him to knock it off. We wanted to fix the damage from the pole, not rebuild Tokyo after Godzilla came through. He promised to give me my numbers in 15 minutes.

Sixteen minutes later, I discovered just how sharp a pencil Joe Jitsu had. The estimate came to almost 4,000 dollars. I could repair a brain tumor for less. Plus, because apparently everyone in LA currently has some sort of car damage, it would take 10 to 14 days. Oh, by the way, their office has a great tie-in rate with a nearby car rental place. Something told me I was being played. For once, Dad on the right shoulder had a salient word in my ear. On the way out of the place, I started to contemplate who would not be receiving Christmas gifts from me this year.

I listened to the silence one more time. "Dad, what do I do now?" I headed over to the guy with the small shop who did the ghetto fix last week. I was careful not to mention the other estimate just in case there is some place where all these body shop guys meet once a week to trade secrets.

He surveyed the car and wrote down very little. He looked at me and said, "Okay, let's see how much money we can save you to get this fixed?" I squinted my eyes to make sure this was reality. Instead of plugging a bunch of numbers into a computer, this guy calculated my estimate with a good old fashioned adding machine. With a paper roll no less. He ripped it off and said he did the best he could do.

$1200.

Sayonara, first guy. Plus it would take only four to five business days, maybe less. And he had a deal with a nearby car rental place that would get me a vehicle for about 30 bucks a day.

Thanks, Dad. There are times I still listen.

Dinner last night: the wonderful BLT from Clementine's.