Sorry. Got my car back now. Everything's groovy, but I've been a bit preoccupied and just got the keyboard to type up the rest of the story.
So. Three days after I dropped my car off for repair, the body shop called and told me it was ready. I was thrilled, of course. I dropped off the rental, the nice people at Enterprise drove me to the body shop (which is conveniently about half a mile down the road), I picked up my car, and I took my wife out to lunch.
I was all psyched about getting my car back when...the steering wheel started shaking violently. I finished out the ride to the restaurant (which was, by the way, mediocre), drove back to the body shop, and waited for approximately an hour while the mechanics worked on my car.
Since the shop had replaced the right front wheel and tire, they figured re-balancing the tires would do the trick. And, while it helped, the shaking persisted. Grr.
So. Called the body shop. Told them it didn't fix the problem. Called Progressive, left a message saying my car needed more work, "please advise." Waited.
Got a call the next day from Progressive. They said to go ahead and bring it back to the shop and they'll work out the costs with the shop. So I did. Bad news: I had to go another weekend without driving my car.
I drop the car off Monday. They work on it. Tuesday morning comes, I get a call from the shop saying my car is ready. Groovy. I go to pick it up and, just out of curiosity, I ask what exactly caused the trouble. Realize these are experience mechanics; I assumed it would take something out-of-the-ordinary to perplex them for a few days.
Now, this is where it gets weird. I'm talking like, "This cannot happen in real space-time without destroying like a million alternate universes" weird.
The guy tells me that the new wheel they put on my car was, like almost all replacements, a recondition wheel. Thing is, it was defective. When they balanced the tired in the shop, everything seemed cool. But when they bolted it to the car, there was a slight defect in the wheel that would cause the shaking--thus presenting a puzzling problem.
At this point, I'm thinking that this must be an odd occurrence. So I ask him how often this happens.
He says that in the twenty years that he's worked on cars, he has never seen this happen before. I almost burst into laughter right there. I mean, let's think about this:
A drunk man backs into my car, parks the car, and goes to sleep in the backseat. The police arrive, wake him up, and let him go his merry stupored way. The odds? Like, one in a few million.
The first defective wheel a mechanic has seen in his twenty years of experience ends up on my car, replacing the wheel that aforementioned drunk damaged with his truck. The odds? One in a few billion, at least.
Bizarre. Truly bizarre.
Anyway. Point of the story is, God is good. Even when all the forces of hell conspire to keep me from driving, God protects me and gives me favor with man.
I've got my car back now and it is wonderful to drive again. And my experience driving a Pontiac Sunfire will assure that I never--and I mean never--view my car as anything but a blessing from my parents (they payed well over half the cost) and, of course, from God.
So, all's well that ends well. Hope you all enjoyed my story and thank you for all the prayers that saw me through safely and sanely.
Good night and God bless. ^^
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