Friday January 20, 2006

Back in Black.

Zoom Zoom, Thunk.

Ah. The sound of a well-tuned engine. Ain't nothing like it. Purring away like a leashed, rather large, cat. Yes, the porsche is back. Gleaming, expensive, and happy. There is however a story to tell about getting it back.

Yesterday I got the call that the car was done. We had checked in on Monday and the engine was in and running. A few more things had to be done and then the car was going to get detailed.

The car came back Thursday morning from being detailed with an "ouchie" as my daughter calls them. Whoever had done the work made the mistake of closing the engine hood in the wrong spot. Always close the engine hood by placing your hand on the grill and then pressing down. (What, there are no instructions on the hood to tell you this?) If you press lower down, then you leave a dent. Not the paint-popping kind, but a dent nevertheless. Well, car had dent.

My mechanic, who pays for the detail, got his dent person out who immediately removed said dent. Detail person got to pay for dent removal. Result, you can't tell the car had a dent. But the story doesn't end there.

[evil laugh]

We show up to get car. Daughter (think 4 years old), climbs out of Daddy's car shouting, "zoom zoom car, zoom zoom car!". She was very excited about getting my car back. She gets to ride in the front seat in my car (no air bags + no back seat = front seat).

I go off to pay for the beast (Arrrgh.). Daughter goes off with Daddy to inspect the bottoms of cars up on racks and get more ball bearings from big Dan, the mechanic who keeps a whole box of goodies for kids to take home.

We transfer car seat and momma bunny (NEVER leave home without momma bunny when going on adventures!). Momma and daughter jump in, buckle up, and fire up that engine! We are off.

We head down the alley and out to turn left onto El Camino Real. As we turn left, I accelerate. Er, um. Well, rather one might say, punch it! Zoooooom, THUNK. Red light on dash comes on, we pull over. Daddy pulls over behind us. I call mechanic and turn around and drive back.

Show up and mechanics descend on car. Pop hood. Lots of muttering. Turn off engine. Ahha! The remnants of a black glove are wrapped around the shaft that used to have some belts on it.

Remember the dent? Said dent person left their black glove somewhere they should not have. All the pieces were removed. Belts replaced and thankfully no damage to the car. My mechanic took all pieces of said glove and placed them in a zip lock bag. As we zoomed off happily into the sunset, he was evilly chortling about how many free dent jobs he was going to get out of his dent person.

( Jan 20 2006, 12:08:59 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]