No Good Deed

I wrecked my passenger side front tire tonight, and possibly the right axle too. How? I hit a poorly placed and designed curb, when returning a cat, out front of a small HUD apartment building.

To get there, I had to thread through a mob of teens, on skateboards, who refused to move out of the way. The street is short and bizarre. Then you turn at a right angle to the right and go downhill a very short distance, at the same time, angling farther right to access the only non disabled parking place.

I didn't see that very short curved high curb. You can't see it, from the driver's side, as you come down. The garbage cans up top further occluded the start of that curb from vision. Tenants say it is hit all the time.

Tonight, I hit and ruined a new tire and possibly my right axle. Big chunk tore out of the tire and flattened it, slightly bent the lip of the rim, but hopefully it's not damaged beyond further use, the rim that is. The new tire is toast.

I put the donut on it for now, but because it's on the front and it's a front wheel drive, it can't be driven on it, except to a tire store. But the transmission clunks when going into reverse now and I think I wrecked out that right axle too. I am furious and angry and fed up. No good deed in this town goes unpunished.

I suppose these things happen.

The sound was very loud when I hit it. I stopped immediately. Normal kids would have run to help. But not the thirty or more teens up on that street. Not one of them offered to help. Not even one. But then, I told people about this and they said normal teens don't help others. It's an abnormal teen that would offer help. So, there you go.

Here's the sad coincidence: I had to wait about a month and a half to get a doctor's appointment. It was tomorrow. My doctor is in Corvallis. I have to cancel it. That's just like, I mean, why in the world, the day I wreck out my car, would it be the day before the doctor appointment? Gosh.

I don't know for sure if the transmission is damaged but it's not acting right. The only way it could have gotten damaged is from hitting the tire on that curb which could have jammed the axle on that side somehow, into the tranny itself. But maybe the clunking will stop, you know, and I'll just be out the price of a tire.

Darn it anyhow. It'll be hard to find a single. The car takes a wierd size that is not easy to find in say a junkyard and most tire stores don't sell singles, I don't think. Won't be a tread match, that's for sure.

I don't have a credit card anymore to use to buy a new tire. I cancelled after I got rate jacked for no good reason.

In a tiny little nobody person rebellion, I wrote a letter to include in my last ever credit card payment just today, to that company.

I told them they had rate jacked an honest and faithful customer who had always paid her bill on time and never run up huge amounts of debt. I told them that I thought their company was unscrupulous and mean. I told them, because I knew it would be a little person reading the letter, that the corporates should stick their heads up their asses, but that I bet that is where their heads already reside.

I signed off, "from a little nobody person, a cat rescuer, an honest person who pays her bills whom Capital One screwed over, please fix your pets, never contact me again with junk mail offers, and have a nice day."

So I guess I kind of screwed myself over in that little rebellion against the rate jacking because now I don't have a credit card that might help me get a new tire and fix that axle if it's damaged. Boy.

In a smelly sideline to this story, when I hit that curb, blowing the tire, the male cat in the trap in the back got scared, and peed out like a gallon, drenching my car in the odor of male cat. You know, it's not been a great day, but at least the sun was out.

Darn it all. Darn it darn it. I finally called Dan, borrowing a tenant cell phone, last night, to see if he could come help, because I'd misplaced my lugnut wrench and could not remove the blown tire and put on the donut without one. He arrived and said simply, "Shit happens." Shit certainly does happen. Tonight shit hit me. Dan then told me he was unable to stomach the male cat urine smell. This was ironic, coming from an unneutered human male. Hahahahahaha.

My Scion is looking bad again. It got all scratched somewhere. There are dents from an incident at the Corvallis 7-11 in one side. This happened years ago, just after I got the car.

I'd just driven into a parking space, when a fight broke out among some young men. They were like male cats fighting, so intent on each other, and hitting one another, that they saw no one else. One slammed the other into the side of my car, denting it. I tried to get the kid's name, from the officer called by the clerk on duty, but, because both men involved refused to press charges against each other, the officer told me I'd have to get his name and address myself, because it was now a non issue to him. I tried to get him to take a report then on my damaged car, and he refused, saying I'd need to do that in a civil court. I said "How can I do that if I can't find out who those guys were?" The officer shrugged and left. So there are those dents.

Part of the plastic grill fell out somewhere. I don't know where. The front bumper split at one point on one side, and that also happened just after I got it.

The back hatch lever is hanging again. That stems from when someone broke it off out on College Park Drive. I was returning cats to one of the tenants. When I returned to my car, I found the lever hanging by the electric cord. First I glued it, fabricating parts from such things as, in one case, a part of a 3cc syringe, to replace clips, and broken plastic outcrops. That lasted almost a year, then it broke off and was again dangling from the electric cord. Then I bolted it, but they fell out, for some reason. The jiggling of car travel I guess.

Anyhow, it's hanging again. Since it broke loose this last time when I was picking up traps just after the last FCCO clinic, I taped it back on, using FCCO cat id tape strips off the traps I picked up.

Well, it's been a good car, I must say. I love it, even if it now looks a lot like a clunker. It does have over 125,000 miles on it.

I did talk to the HUD manager of that building. When I told her the tenants say the curb is a problem and has been hit repeatedly, she said, "Well, that's tenants saying that, and, you can take that as you see it." Her implication, although she slowed down mid sentence, like she had thought better of such a statement and wanted to stop, but couldn't, was that you can't believe a HUD tenant. This was awkward, since I'm a HUD tenant. And to avoid further awkwardness, I quickly broke in with "I'm a HUD tenant."

I probably will not pursue reimbursement for the damage quite frankly out of the awkwardness of being a HUD tenant and that building with the badly placed curb, being a HUD owned and operated building.