COLOURING OUTSIDE THE LINES - Learning

 

Last week, the bullet got bit and I got a new car.  Okay, a new-to-me new car. 

My saga begins about 6 months ago, in our biggest-in-the-region city,  Barrie, population 155,000.  That’s pretty big when the town you live in is 25,000 and believe me, the traffic reflects the pop. 

I love where I live now, finally settling here, in the Beach, 5 years ago.  I also decided it was a great time to retire.  Best decision I made in a long time.  And even better, I discovered that condo living suits me just fine.  I’m loving it!  Someone else gets to do the lawn mowing, weed whacking, spider and bug spraying and the like.  Also, especially here in our northern clime, plowing the parking spots, shovelling the sidewalks and putting down the ‘don’t-slip-and-break-your-hip-stuff during what I call the off-season. 

But I digress ... 

I used to live near Barrie and know it fairly well.  I attended a small business networking group there and came to know quite a few of the other  members; what their businesses were about and where they are located.  Plot twist; I actually met a long-lost cousin of mine at the very first meeting I ever went to.  Amazing what a small world it can be. 

                                   * * *

Having discovered my passion, with a passion― photography ―  my Nikon camera is usually on my hip, literally (I use a side-sling), when I’m out and about and especially when I go jaunting.  Well, it got very annoying when I turned it on and it would freeze every time.  I had to take the battery out, put it back in and turn it on again to get it to work.  BIG sigh.  Luckily, I bought the extended warranty.  The only wrinkle was that I had to bring it to Harry’s in Barrie, so they could send it out to have it fixed. 

I decided that I just could not be without a camera at all and managed to find a small point & shoot – not a Nikon, on my local(ish) marketplace group.  It was economical and available and best of all, the seller agreed to meet me at Harry’s.  

Everything went off flawlessly, despite the world-wide insanity at the time.  And then everything went to hell in a hand cart, and I wished that I could have a mulligan.                                            

I missed my turn onto the road home and decided rather than turning around, to just continue on, taking Mapleview, a major east-west corridor in Barrie and one that had been under construction when I moved, in 2012 to the Town just a little bit south.  It has been under construction ever since and it’s 2022 now.  Gotta wonder if it’ll ever be finished.  It’s starting to remind me of the 401. 

 It's the tail end of the Fall-back   time-change week, a cloudy,   dampish kind of day.  Bunched   up at the light near the Crappy   Tire on Mapleview, we were all waiting impatiently for a rather long red light to change.  The Honda SUV in front of me moved quickly and so did I, wanting out of ‘city’ traffic and to get home. 

All of sudden and not sure why even to this day, but all of a sudden, the SUV stopped dead and then rocked back and forth a few times.  I desperately stomped on the brakes to no avail on the slickish road.   Ooops!!  Bumped into the bumper (they’re well named) and heaved a big sigh. 

Edging slowly and carefully into the inside lane, along with two vehicles in front of me, we made our way to the lane leading into the Honda dealership (handy for the one driving the car I nudged). 

 The three of us drivers got out to  confer - the minivan driver, a   man, who had been severely   jolted by the woman driving the SUV in front of me, Maren, and me.  It looked like my front end had taken the brunt of it, with the hood bunched up and the grill reminding me of a grinning, gap-toothed jack-o-lantern.                                                                                    

The woman, Maren, was shaken (but not stirred).  She had slammed into the guy in front of her pretty hard.  Her front end was smunched in and his back end didn’t look so good.  Maren’s back end, where I had barely tickled it, did not show any damage at all, maybe a scuff mark on the bumper and after a few minutes of getting things sorted out, the other two agreed that there was no reason for me to have to wait around.  I left promptly, just wanting to get back to what I consider my safe haven, especially during the past almost two years of government gaslighting.

Finally.  Home.  I sit down.  Hard, on the sofa.  The events of the afternoon start trickling their way through my grey matter.  HUGE sigh as the implication hits me - FIFTY years' worth of a perfect driving record wiped out in a few seconds, caused partly by me but more so by Maren, who, for some unknown-to-me reason had triggered the thruple.  I never did find out what happened.  No matter.  It was what it was.

 Next on the agenda was to   have my car fixed.  First,   though, was getting a rental   car locally.  One of the   things I learned about living   in The Beach is that there   is only one, count ‘em, one,   rental car place in the Bay   area and with the semi-annual event of time change week, getting a rental car, fast, is as rare as hen’s teeth.  

Chatting with the manager of the one-and-only car rental place, I had to ask why it took so long to get a rental.  He mentioned that the week following time changes are the busiest.  Wouldn’t ya know.  It has taken a week to get the rental, leave my car at the insurance company’s ‘preferred’ body shop, only to be told a week later that they, the insurance company, were totaling my car.  I was crushed.  I thought I’d be driving that car until I died.  

But, then the really stupid news?  The day the insurance company declares my car totaled, is the day I must return the rental.  Are they kidding me???  Is a new car going to magically appear?  Especially during this historic period in time (world stoppage) where a new car has to be ordered months in advance and because of that, no one is giving up the car they have.  Seriously???  Turn in the rental?  I am a one-car family.  What kind of nonsense will insurance companies think of next?  And, what in the heck am I going to do?

To be continued ...