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[disnut8]

Although my thoughts are with everyone in the Katrina path, I had one hell of a morning.

Brilliant me came up with the idea that RichN should take my car to the airport for parking for the week.  That's because our Camry gets better gas mileage so I should be driving that back and forth to work.

So I'm cruising along this morning, going through one of my "shortcuts" which is a development with speed humps.  Not a problem as long as you take them at the 25 MPH advisory.  I'm so cool with the humps and the Camry (I had never driven this car this way).  And then I met a big bad ass Georgia pothole.  I didn't see it since it was right after a hump and I was more concerned with doing that.  Whamp!  And then Elliott (that's the car's name) started to become angry.  He sounded like a plane was taking off.  I figured I blew a tire.

No, all the tires were fine.  So I got back into Elliott and hoped it was a glitch.  No.  I'm now exactly halfway between home and work.  There's no garages nearby.  Nothing.  I decided to go home.  I called RichN (at the Atlanta airport with my safe car).  He told me where to take the car.  I called a friend to get a ride home from there.  No answer.  I called the garage.  Not a problem to bring the car in and I could rent a car from Enterprise to get home.  Not a great solution but a solution.

I had to take back roads (known as surface roads in this area) since I couldn't accelerate that much.  I'd get killed on the Atlanta interstates.  I did make it to the garage.  Verdict.  Exhaust system was damaged.  Still no word from my friend so I arranged for Enterprise to "pick me up".

They did forget about me but I was finally in a Dodge Neon for $30/day an hour later.  My boss was kind of understanding but since I've only been there two weeks, I wasn't happy.

And Enterprise?  That was scary.  Think The Stepford Wives but with white males in tan pants, white shirts, and striped ties.  Everything was eerily efficient.  But they did give me a 10% discount because of my situation.  Overall, I was impressed with the service (even though it took them an hour and two phone calls to get there) but it was just weird.

Elliott can be repaired and he will be sometime today.  Poor Elliott.  Driven 250,000 miles by Elmono's uncle and I kill the damn car by a pothole.  I feel awful!

[Vengeance]

Bitch to the city. Call the newspapers and the media. These are elmono's suggestions, but I'm 100% in agreement. Don't ever take all the responsibility for something like that. Maybe you can foot the bill, but for those people that have no transportation other than one car and that can't afford to get a rental car or get their car fixed, you have to fight for this.

It's one of the whole crusading for the unfortunate things that I really think you should do.

Did you go back to work once you had the rental?

[disnut8]

I didn't go back to work once I had the rental.  It was too impractical and impossible to arrange for anything.  Work is an hour from here.  I have the car in a shop near the house.  Yeah, I could have gone into work but then I would have had to leave there early enough to get the rental back and pick up my car - both places close at 6:00.  And, since the weather is turning into rain thanks to Katrina (already), there's no guarantee the commute home would have been just an hour.

I'm taking Elmono's suggestion tomorrow and getting some photos of the pothole.  The thing that gets me is that it's in this hugely snobby neighborhood (lake community) and there's this large pothole.  I know we've had massive rains in the past couple of months but to put out my exhaust system when I was doing 20 MPH is too much.  Why can a Sebring convertable have no problems for the past two weeks but a Toyota Camry bottoms out?  I shudder to think what would have happened if I hit that thing with the Corvette.

[Vengeance]

The Corvette would have just bent in half. 

[elmono311]

Did you take photos of the "crime scene"?

[disnut8]

Not yet.  I had to find it again.  There's something like 30 speed humps through this development and I had to remember just where I pulled over.  I found it this morning and will bring the camera tomorrow.

The damages were $158 for the repair since they didn't have to replace the entire exhaust system but could weld the part back on.  And $30 for the rental car.  Plus an entire day lost at work.  But at least my boss was so understanding even though I've only been here two weeks.