"Bad Car Day"

On Tuesday, Austin & I had what can only be described as a "Bad Car Day". It started off when I brought the van in for a routine oil change. In the process they found a leak in one tire (of which I had already been suspicious was the case) and a burned out turn-signal bulb (so that's why it sounded like it was going crazy when you turned it on). In addition, the back brakes need some serious work ASAP (which I also suspected because of a noise we had been ignoring for 6 months) and the front suspension also has some issues. Great. There goes the rest of our tax refund, which just arrived last Friday.

On the way home I decided to go through the automatic car wash in Denver because the van was terribly salty after driving to/from Des Moines this weekend. I was ecstatic that the credit card machine was actually working for once. I even splurged and paid $.50 more for the dryer at the end. However, when the wash cycle was done the front exit door didn't open. So I missed my dryer session. Plus I was stuck in the car wash. Thankfully, it was warm outside and the back door had never closed, so backing out was an option. Unfortunately, I was being so careful not to scrape against the pay station on the driver's side that I didn't notice the pole on the passenger side. The passenger side mirror became a sad casualty.

Meanwhile, Austin came home late from work. He was in the hills west of Denver when he hit a slick spot and slid off the road with his truck. He aimed for the snow bank, but got hung up enough that he had to walk to the nearest house to borrow a shovel and spent 30+ minutes digging his truck out in the dark while still in his work clothes. Thankfully, he was able to get out, but there was still so much snow compacted underneath the truck he decided to (you guessed it!) go through the car wash before going home. Sadly enough for him, the back door closes at night in the automatic bay. So he had to use the emergency exit door and pay for another car wash just so the back door would open and he could back out (mirrors intact).

Needless to say, it was not a happy "How was your day?" conversation when he finally got home at 8:30pm! In fact, the first thing Austin did was look up the trade-in values for our vehicles. It's still more economical to repair what we've got, so that thought ended there. The good news is that after many phone calls, the owner of the car wash is going to pay for the mirror repair and reimburse Austin for the extra wash. The brake issue still needs to be addressed, but luckily I had no plans to use the van the rest of the week. I guess we can just be thankful that no one was hurt and no one was stranded anywhere.