A tale of a big metal truck: a sad, sad day

On August 25th, we woke up at the ass crack to get Ashley to the airport for her early morning flight. It actually worked out great because I had CPE (continuing education classes that are required in our profession) so I had to be at the class first thing. After dropping Ashley off at the airport, I was happily headed north on 405. It should be noted here that 405 is arguably the WORST freeway in the United States. It's right up there. If it's misting or foggy or actually (gasp!) RAINING, people that are on 405 are absolute idiots. Turns out the sun can be a problem too, you know, because we aren't really used to that yellow ball of light up here... especially after such a dismally cool summer of essentially no sun.

Well.

That sun? Apparently made me blind. The sun was in my eyes, traffic was moving finally, and all of a sudden BAAAAAMMMM. Crunch. Ow.

Oh and by the way? What the fuck?

My poor little mini and it's sun-blinded driver decided to meet a big old tanker truck face to face going about 20 mph. Our lane was the only lane that came to an abrupt stop and due to the sun, I didn't see the truck slam on it's brakes.

Uggggghh.

At that point I thought I was dying because my seat belt had basically seared into my body upon impact and my car smelled like it could blow up in about two seconds and was throwing smoke at me.

But, I have to give mini cooper credit: once again, even in a shitty time, they manage to be cute. On the dash after the crash, the mini told me that I had indeed been in a crash with a little wrecked mini cooper symbol along with blinking lights and bells. No kidding, SHERLOCK.

I THINK I AM AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM MINI PEOPLE.

We managed to pull to an off ramp where a state patrolman showed up and of course there's no damage to the big tanker truck, only to my poor little car...and it's all my fault. Ugh. Meanwhile, I'm about to keel over from feeling like I got hit by a truck. Literally.

I call Justin and tell him that I'm not having the best day and that sweet boy got in his truck to come pick me up...and endured more of the 405 traffic hell himself on the way to me. We got a tow truck since my car was in no shape to be driven anywhere and then promptly went shopping. I have to give Justin massive props for knowing me well enough to know what would take my mind off of the events of the morning...and the fact that I just plain felt like crap. After shopping and some retail therapy with the rather cute boy, I borrowed his truck and went home and slept and then had the brilliant idea that I was ok enough to work out. So after picking up my gorgeous rental car (a white Kia, classy) I headed straight to the gym. Upon walking in Justin gave me a look like, "really, you stubborn ass? Really?" NOTE to self, he might have been right: working out after a pretty intense accident is not the brightest idea I've ever had. Was. not. fun.

Later that night, I was even more off kilter. On the way to pick up Justin's truck from the rental car place (I drove it there to pick up the car and then left it there since he was working), I managed to somehow fall down all of the steps of my house and right onto my ass on the sidewalk. Justin's looking at me (and I think holding back laughter) like, "really, girl, are you ok?" Then 15 minutes later when we returned? I locked all keys to my house inside of the garage in the rental car. Let me tell you: all of this takes some mad talent. I wasn't able to rescue them until the next day.

By this point in the day after trying to kill myself a few times and feeling bad enough in a way that I convince myself that I pretty much almost suceeded, I promptly put on a helmet and pads and sat in a blanket fort on the couch being cuddled by that boy I love for the rest of the night. It seemed like the safest bet. It was.

Some photos of the carnage:


Basically the whole front end of the car had to be rebuilt (I know this now as I write it a couple months later)... the radiator, the turbo/supercharger, both headlights, total hood replacement, etc, etc. (Literally for a month, I got a call everyday on something else that needed to be replaced or rebuilt). Luckily I hit the truck on such a spot that it didn't cause the airbags to go off... that would have been REALLY bad.

More of the damage... though it doesn't look that bad from this angle.

And one more shot.... poor little Alfred. He got hurt. The damage ended up being about $10K. Mini parts are expensive and there was quite a lot that needed to be done, as I already mentioned. AND, it took about 4 weeks to fix. For the last week, I, er, Justin, was filling up the classy Kia's tires every morning as it had a flat tire from the get go (but only really deflated towards the end of the 4 weeks). That was fun.

And of course: to add insult to injury after my accident- the $175 ticket. I go to court on October 14 to try to defer it. We'll see what happens. As I write this, I'm just happy to have my little mini Alfred car back.

A weird note: this accident happened almost 4 years to the DAY that the lady at Walgreens hit my other mini, little Winston. Crazy, huh? Let's just say that in another four years in 2014 I will refuse to drive for the month of August... or at least during that middle week of August...