First... the bad news
So, the highlight of this weekend was a lovely trip to Astoria and Long Beach on the coast with bloomerwedgies, Tabitha and David. I'll get to that shortly. First, I wanted to get the bad part out of the way. Luckily, this was minimally invasive on our fun-filled weekend and really only took about an hour or so of our time and we were all able to continue having fun despite this one bit of yuck. I know it will be a much larger hassle to deal with in the coming weeks, but there was nothing more that could be done over the weekend, so we all mostly just forgot about it and moved on.
So, we drove out to the beach on Saturday to spend the night and enjoy a few days away from the Portland heat.
We were off the beaten path, attempting to locate the wreck of the Peter Iredale and had stopped on a rather unused side street (coincidentally called Iredale St) to look at the map. We were near the tiny post office and a local resident in a rather large Chevy pickup started backing out. She was coming towards us, but we were pretty far back and not moving and had been there for several minutes. There was no way she didn't see us. Heck, we'd been there when she came out of the post office and got into her truck! But she continued backing up and started to get a bit too close for comfort. I started trying to put the car into reverse to get out of the way, and Stephanie leaned over and banged on my horn. Alas, it was all to no avail, as the woman just kept coming back until her rear bumper crunched into the driver's side headlight on my poor little Subaru. CRUNCH!!!
We both got out and she went on the defensive immediately. She obviously felt really stupid for what she had done and was trying to cast the blame off of herself by pointing out a number of irrelevant issues, and things that really did nothing to help her case.
"Why were you even here? This is a backroad and nowhere near where you are going?"
- it is irrelevant why we were there. You still shouldn't be backing into stopped vehicles.
"It's dangerous to stop in places like that. The locals around here don't expect cars to be there so we just back up without looking."
- Wow. She actually said that. That's really not helping your case, lady. As Tabitha pointed out... it's a good thing we weren't a kid on a bike or something.
After her initial defensive semi-accusatory statements, she settled down and was quite nice and amiable. We exchanged insurance information, called our respective insurance companies, and got things arranged and sorted. She's got USAA, which is supposed to be pretty good, so I'm hopeful that we can get this all resolved pretty fast. I heard most of her conversation with her company and she did state, quite clearly, that she had backed into me (though I didn't hear her make any mention of the fact that she hadn't even bothered to look. Heh.) so there should be no question of who was at fault.
Anyhow, there were no injuries of any sort. Nobody was jolted, and there are no sore muscles or whiplash to worry about. She wasn't even sure if she'd hit us and there was only a tiny little scratch, about an inch long, on the rubber part of her bumper. So, the only thing that needs any attention is my poor car. It'll take a fair amount of body work. Hopefully, I won't have to go TOO long without a vehicle. In my debt-payoff mode, I can't afford the full coverage insurance, so there is no rental to cover me. Maybe her company will pay for that. Who knows? I'll be calling my insurance company again shortly to find out how I go about dealing with the rest of this now that it's the work-week.
So, we drove out to the beach on Saturday to spend the night and enjoy a few days away from the Portland heat.
We were off the beaten path, attempting to locate the wreck of the Peter Iredale and had stopped on a rather unused side street (coincidentally called Iredale St) to look at the map. We were near the tiny post office and a local resident in a rather large Chevy pickup started backing out. She was coming towards us, but we were pretty far back and not moving and had been there for several minutes. There was no way she didn't see us. Heck, we'd been there when she came out of the post office and got into her truck! But she continued backing up and started to get a bit too close for comfort. I started trying to put the car into reverse to get out of the way, and Stephanie leaned over and banged on my horn. Alas, it was all to no avail, as the woman just kept coming back until her rear bumper crunched into the driver's side headlight on my poor little Subaru. CRUNCH!!!
We both got out and she went on the defensive immediately. She obviously felt really stupid for what she had done and was trying to cast the blame off of herself by pointing out a number of irrelevant issues, and things that really did nothing to help her case.
"Why were you even here? This is a backroad and nowhere near where you are going?"
- it is irrelevant why we were there. You still shouldn't be backing into stopped vehicles.
"It's dangerous to stop in places like that. The locals around here don't expect cars to be there so we just back up without looking."
- Wow. She actually said that. That's really not helping your case, lady. As Tabitha pointed out... it's a good thing we weren't a kid on a bike or something.
After her initial defensive semi-accusatory statements, she settled down and was quite nice and amiable. We exchanged insurance information, called our respective insurance companies, and got things arranged and sorted. She's got USAA, which is supposed to be pretty good, so I'm hopeful that we can get this all resolved pretty fast. I heard most of her conversation with her company and she did state, quite clearly, that she had backed into me (though I didn't hear her make any mention of the fact that she hadn't even bothered to look. Heh.) so there should be no question of who was at fault.
Anyhow, there were no injuries of any sort. Nobody was jolted, and there are no sore muscles or whiplash to worry about. She wasn't even sure if she'd hit us and there was only a tiny little scratch, about an inch long, on the rubber part of her bumper. So, the only thing that needs any attention is my poor car. It'll take a fair amount of body work. Hopefully, I won't have to go TOO long without a vehicle. In my debt-payoff mode, I can't afford the full coverage insurance, so there is no rental to cover me. Maybe her company will pay for that. Who knows? I'll be calling my insurance company again shortly to find out how I go about dealing with the rest of this now that it's the work-week.