the tinyblog

A friend came over to my house to help me do an errand and he took a look at my newly smashed hood. He walked over to it and said, "Hey, why don't you just bend this down a little? It would look better." He proceeded to do just that, leaning down on the hood and bending it a bit so it was flatter.

I regarded him from several feet away, "Well, it used to open and close."

"Oops, sorry," he said, and then we both forgot about it.

...until I asked a friend what she wanted for her birthday that is. "I only want one thing...I just want to go hiking. Will you take me hiking?"

"Sure!" I said, and we planned a trip to a nearby wilderness spot. That morning I opened my hood for the first time in awhile to change the oil, since I was about to go on a little road trip. When I was done I slammed the hood, and I guess in the back of my mind I did notice that it didn't seem to close quite right.

I picked up my friend, we ran some errands and put everything in the car. Snacks: check. Good shoes: check. Water: check. Plenty of gas: check. We happily put a badass mix tape in the tape deck and headed onto the interstate for some hiking fun.

I had been on the interstate for about 5 minutes, finally getting up to cruising speed in the fast lane when the wind finally caught the hood right, whipped it up past its restraints, and slammed it into my windshield with great force. It was like a little explosion happening right in our face. Suddenly we were going 65 miles per hour with zero visibility.

I looked underneath the little opening below the hood and pulled myself off the road.

I looked over at my poor friend and she looked a little shell shocked. I didn't blame her. I felt a little shell shocked myself as I climbed out of the auto with cars racing by at 80 miles an hour and tried to find some way to secure my hood well enough to get off the road. I did my best to tie it with a strap, but there was really nothing on the hood you could tie something to. It freaked us out by flipping up one more time before we got off the Interstate, but I manages to look below it and get onto city streets.

I pulled it down one more time and limped back into the dock at granny speed. As soon as I got home my friend and I laid on the lawn and she cried in my arms at the shock of it all.

Upstairs I went to talk to Fast Furney. He was eating spaghetti, watching TV and drinking beer in his skivvies after work, but he still came to my rescue. He helped me punch holes in my hood with a screwdriver and wire it shut with a coathanger. We looked at my poor car and sighed. The right windshield wiper had been smashed, along with the windshield. When it was turned on it made a gentle thwack, thwack as the loose piece smacked against the glass.

It worked like a charm though, until he got the headlamps and took it into his shop once again. He fixed the clasp on my hood, he replaced my windshield wiper with one I had laying around, and then he hammered my frame into submission enough to get the headlamp assembly into the car. For this he charged me the cost of the headlight and again a ridiculously small amount for labor.

Now I had spent probably $300 on parts and tabs, and now except for the windshield, the car was the closest it had been to street legal in several months. It was such a relief!

Then, of course, only a few weeks later, I hit a car on the shoulder of the Interstate, smashed into a guardrail, and totalled my car (yes, the part with the brand new head lamps). I remember looking at my wreck of a car as cars speeded by, honking their horns and nearly hitting the back of my car. I sighed and thought of the hard work that Fast Furney had put in.

Well, it wouldn't be the last time Fast Furney would help me...

(continued...)