Tidbits
Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…
Photos
How we were traumatized by the automatic car wash
April 20, 2009, 7:52 pm
We switched Mr B back to normal tires last week, and the rims were covered with brake dust. We decided on the way home to Waterloo on Sunday to get a car wash at the Esso near my house. It was a touchless system, but it was a bit different than what we were used to. You just drive right in, and put your front driver-side tire between this metal rectangular frame on the ground. There were lights telling you to move forward, or move back, until you are in the right position. So far so good.
The car wash started, the jets on the moving frame approached. THUNK! Mr. B’s passenger side mirror folded in. I kinda stared at it, and said that I didn’t know Mr B’s mirrors folded. Mike had this shocked looked on his face and said, “They don’t!”.
A car wash is probably the worst place to be when this happens. What are we suppose to do, get out? Drive off? It’s not like there’s an emergency stop switch or something.
Then the jets started moving towards the front of the car again, the water pressure slowly pushed the mirror back to it’s normal position. Oh crap! Mike was telling me to open the window!! Umm, no, a) I’ll rather not get those chemical all over me and in the car, and b) I value my arm over Mr B’s side mirror. So we just stared in helpless horror as the jets passed to the front of the car and knocked the mirror right off. It was just dangling by the wires!
Now we were really desperate, if it falls right off, what are we suppose to do, go back in and gather the pieces? The one blessing is that being such a crappy car wash, the jets only passed from the front to the back and back to the front once, and it was over. Mike numbly followed the instructions to drive slowly through the blowers, which caused the mirror to swing around. I was like, dude, get out of here!
We quickly parked to check the damages. Mike was mentally preparing himself to cut the wires off the mirror so we can drive back to Waterloo.
There was not a scratch on it, which is pretty impressive since we have turn signal lights on it. We also saw some hinges inside, and realized we can snap it back on. Then we checked the blinker light, the auto adjust. All works. As good as before, except for some minor scuff marks on the inner plastic. Huh, cool, do cars do that nowadays?
Needless to say, Mike is going to hand wash his baby from now on.
And to add insult, the rims were still dirty! Never, ever again, will we go through that kind of car wash again. The clerk at the gas station of course, can’t do anything for us. He said he’s never heard of it happening before. All the mirror height black marks on the jets seem to say otherwise. The gas station is also fairly new, built within a year or two. Don’t think it’s worth the effort of complaining to corporate. What are they gonna do, give us a free wash? No thanks! Of course, if it had really broken the mirror, we would be serving them our $500+ repair bill.
Tagged: Personal
Comments (3)
better check with better business bureau… ?
Brake dusts are really stubborn. My rims are covered in it after about a month, and it requires extreme effort and patience to remove. There are cleaners of course but I haven’t tried them.
But anyway, of course the attendant says he can’t do anything, but they’re *totally* responsible.
Ugh, and of course by rims we all mean WHEELS.
© Maggie Tam 2007-2009 www.onechopstick.ca
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