A Little Crunch Time…

Yesterday’s post ended up being all about knitting, and I guess I needed something soothing to focus on after the week I had had. No week starts of well when it starts with a crunch to your car which causes some pretty major damage.

On February 23rd, I assisted a photographer from Santa Fe with a wedding here in Houston. She had photographed the daughter’s wedding last year, and the couple who had been a couple for years decided to get married at last. The photographer had told me that it was near the Galleria, at their house, but she hadn’t told me the address until the day before. It was in River Oaks. Or, as I told Mike later, in the “Terms of Endearment” neighborhood. Seriously huge houses. In a part of River Oaks I’ve never been to, on a private lane. A huge tent was set up for the party after the ceremony, which was officiated by a well known judge in their living room. A gorgeous black-tie affair. Incredible, just incredible. We had a really great time photographing it all.

I left at about 1am, and set the GPS for home. (I had come from downtown, so I wasn’t going back the same way that I came.) Driving off, I misunderstood which road I was supposed to turn onto, and turned a block early on what was a dead end road. Crap.

Being River Oaks, there are no curbs, but many of the yards are lined with bricks or a wrought iron post & chain fence, about 10 inches tall.

I’m really good at making 3-point turns, or in this case a 5-point turn since it was a narrow road. I decided I would just turn around and get straightened out, heading back to where I needed to be. No problem, or so I thought.

I needed to watch the brick mini-wall that was behind me, so I slowly backed up, and then went forward — and my bumper, which is about 12 inches off the ground, went right OVER one of those wrought iron poles. Totally cleared it, which then caused me to basically hit the pole with my radiator instead.

Crap.

The CR-V started to make a horrendous sound. I got out to see if I could see anything, and the pole was fine, but clearly my vehicle wasn’t. Gah. I decided to drive to the nearest main road and see if I had any problems driving. It drove just fine – it was just the bent fan kicking on when I stopped that I heard making that awful sound.

I cautiously drove home, keeping an eye on all the gauges the whole way.

Monday morning, I went to leave for an appointment that was right by the Honda dealership. I figured I would go to the appointment, and then go to the dealership and get it fixed. As I backed out of the garage, I saw a liquid on the ground – blue liquid, so most likely the coolant from the radiator. Again driving cautiously and watching all the gauges, I went to the appointment and then to the service department.

As soon as the service department specialist came out and looked at the damage, he informed me that I needed to take it to the Collision Center. Seems the shield under the CR-V is mounted to the bumper, and the mounts were broken. You could see exactly where I hit the pole at all of 3 miles per hour. It wasn’t going to be the inexpensive fix I was hoping for. Oh, no. It was a big fix.

I called the insurance company, and started a claim with the option to cancel it if the repairs were low enough that we wanted to pay instead. Turns out that the whole thing was over $3000 with the rental car, and really? We have insurance for a reason. Just for times like this when stupid things happen. I guess it depends on the insurance company, because when I claim the insurance for the house when the roof broke down, they didn’t have a problem to pay for the repairs, so I could get any service I want to do the work, and I found a really good one at http://www.palmbeachroofingexpert.com/boca-raton-roofing/.

It took them less time than they estimated to repair it, and I picked it back up last Friday with a shiny new bumper, new radiator, new AC condensor, some new hoses, a new tie-rod, and a long list of other things. Good as new.

As for me? I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt at all – the only thing wrong with me was a bit of a bruised ego from the stupidity of it all! I still can’t believe I hit a freakin’ pole and it did that much damage!