Showed up at the appointed time along with 55 other folks. From the number of guys in suits in the front of the courtroom, I knew right away that this was not going to be another case dismissal before the trial even started, as happened on Actual Jury Duty Day 1.
Roll was called, up yonder. I was there.
Bailiffs patrolled the courtroom, giving folks dirty looks when they tried to sit in the wrong section or, in one case, giving a dirty look and pointing to their own head when they wanted a potential juror to remove their ball cap. (Not me.)
Eventually, we stood for the judge's entrance. He was a jolly fellow, a bit Wilford Brimleyesque in appearance, who made jokes and seemed a decent sort. He was a visiting judge from two counties over, due to the fact that two of the regular Borderland judges had recused themselves as they both used to work in a law firm with one of the 18 lawyers for the defense.
The judge had the bailiff pass out 56 pieces of paper, one per potential juror, then reseated most of us on the other side of the courtroom in that order, while 13 of us (not me) were seated in the jury box. The judge gave some instructions to us and then asked about potential schedule conflicts any of us might have, such as doctor's appointments, that might occur during what could possibly be a three week trial. He noted each of our numbers and wrote all of this down for future reference.
That done, the prosecuting attorney began asking us general questions, such as if any of us knew any of the parties among the defense and prosecution, if we knew anything about the case at hand, if we had any strong feelings about the types of businesses involved in the case, etc. And, as I said, there were apparently 18 lawyers for the defense, as multiple companies and institutions were being sued. One by one, they each stood and asked similar questions of the entire jury pool.
Very quickly I came to realize that my odds of not serving on the jury were very low. At least half of the room knew the plaintiffs personally, or went to high school with the plaintiffs, or knew multiple parties among the defendants, or worked directly for the defendants, or frequently saw members of the 18-strong defense attorney team socially (which for one lady, it wasn't quite apparent at first what she meant by "socially," particularly after she noted, "Well, we have dinners together," but then it came out that she was actually talking about some sort of a dinner club where multiple families gather for grub), etc. It seemed that any shred of possible connection to either of these groups that anyone in the room had was plumbed and displayed for all. Yet, nearly everyone still claimed they'd be able to remain unbiased (except for the lady that worked directly for the defendants, who was shortly excused). I, on the other hand, didn't know anybody in the room, I don't read the papers, my ear is not to the ground, and up until two months ago I had spent the better part of a decade without access to local television channels of any kind cause I had Dish Network. In other words, I was the perfect juror; the intelligent guy who also has scads of time on his hands and a willingness to serve if called, who's still somehow managed to remain completely ignorant of local news and and untainted by public and editorial opinion on any given local issue. I was doomed.
By the time the q&a was over, we'd been there for nearly three hours, so the judge called a short weecess. (That's a recess to have a wee. My joke, not his--though, now that I read it again, maybe I should have given him the credit on that one.)
A brief digression on the subject of the public men's room of the Borderland County Courthouse: Holy shit, I've seen better facilities in prisons! In fact, show me any given episode of Lockup and I'll point out a dumper with more privacy. On first glance, I was confused by the restroom. Most public mensrooms consist of at least one toilet stall and a urinal, with variations on the number of each. What I was seeing, though, was one long room with no stalls at all and what looked to be two sinks followed by five urinals along one wall. And while there were technically some small barriers between the last two of the five urinals, they were basically pony walls. Seemed like it would have been more efficient if they'd just put in one long stadium trough, to me. I wondered if maybe there was a separate room elsewhere in the building for actual toilets. Then I wandered deeper into the room and saw that the two units with the pony walls actually were toilets, albeit ones without seats of any kind. There weren't even bolt holes where seats had once been fastened. Just pure white, prison-shitter-style porcelain. And the pony walls seemed to be there only to offer places to hang a single roll of toilet paper and a seat-cover dispenser. Anyone wishing to drop trou and have themselves a screamer would have to do it in front of God and everybody, their ass separated from the rim itself by a thin ring of waxed paper. To give the bathroom a little credit, it was pretty clean. However, other than the cleanliness factor, I'd say 95 percent of the bathrooms I encountered in Guatemalla and El Salvador were better than this one and that includes porta-potties!
Digression ended.
Once back in the courtroom, the judge then had all attorneys convene in chambers to hash out which members of the jury pool they definitely didn't want. And I'm pretty sure the defense had made a few enemies already, myself possibly included. One of the 18 defense attorneys had posed a seemingly hypothetical scenario in which jurors were asked if they would be willing to give a fair shake to a defendant whose actions were proven to be completely legal, though clearly unethical and unsavory. And he used specifics that seemed very much to reflect on HIS particular clients' situation. Someone among the jury pool pointed out that they were pretty sure there were laws on the books making the scenario presented definitely illegal, but the guy just threw up his hands as if to say, "I'm not commenting on that one," and then pointed at the judge, saying that the legality was for him to determine. Now, having not heard the actual case, I don't know for sure that his scenario was in fact the case, but from the sort of questions all the other lawyers were asking, it sure seemed to. One jury pool member told him flat out that he'd be unable to give a fair shake to such a defendant, legal or not.
Eventually they whittled down the jury pool from 56 to six members. (Which was not the number of jurors I was expecting, but apparently it's a current trend.) I was not among their number, but soon had a second chance when they needed two alternates. For this they chose two sets of five people each and then let the attorneys go off and have more hob nobbing over who they could agree on from those five. I wasn't initially among the first five, but one lady who'd been chosen had a schedule conflict, so my name was called to replace her. During the attorney conference on the five, the judge threatened to read their decision backward so that whoever was left at the end would be the one to serve. Instead, he just had the clerk read the "winner" as it were. Not me.
So we were released to our own devices and told to call the hotline again to see when we'd next be needed.
While I confess I was relieved, I am still willing to serve. Particularly since I found what little I could understand about the case itself to be pretty interesting. Sounded like one with lots of finger pointing in its future. (And 18 defense attorneys have a lot of fingers between them.) Maybe I'll have to try and keep up with the trial in the news. I can maybe get a few details on the local TV channels I now possess.
Which brings me to my next story...
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Actual Jury Duty: Day 2
Called the jury line today, as instructed. They claim my group is to appear for possibly jury service on the morn. We'll see if it actually happens. I'll not be surprised if I phone in the morning to hear it's been called off, though.
How do people with real jobs deal with this sort of thing? First they schedule you, then cancel it. Then reschedule for next week, then cancel. Then call you in and cancel. Set a new date and cancel. Constantly leading you on. I don't know how people are able to schedule it with their jobs. My impression has always been that you're called, you go, you're either picked or not, you serve, you go home. I'm kind of astounded works.
How do people with real jobs deal with this sort of thing? First they schedule you, then cancel it. Then reschedule for next week, then cancel. Then call you in and cancel. Set a new date and cancel. Constantly leading you on. I don't know how people are able to schedule it with their jobs. My impression has always been that you're called, you go, you're either picked or not, you serve, you go home. I'm kind of astounded works.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Tales from the Lost Months: Jury Duty Ice Road Trucking/Subaruing Blues (PART 7)
Upon hearing that King Subaru had received no notice about the insurance approval, I called my insurance company back, explained the whole thing to yet another rep and then asked why neither I nor King had been contacted as promised. The helpful and attentive agent (used with no sarcasm, as she was actually both) had a look in my record, saw everything I said documented and then she too wondered aloud why neither I nor King had been contacted. There was a brief moment in which the agent seemed to suggest that the supplemental had not actually been approved, but then she saw the note that it had (plus, probably a note saying I was likely to snap if unwisely told such a thing) and all seemed right. From what she was able to determine, less than a minute later, she had access to all the materials that needed faxing including, I confirmed, the much sought-after photocopy of the payment check for King Subaru. She said she’d FAX it right over and asked me to confirm the fax number.
“I have no idea,” I said. After all, I’ve never had cause to fax anybody in all this. I tried to look it up on King Subaru’s website, but it was not listed among the myriad of numbers they list.
“Well, I’ll just use this one,” the agent said. “It’s the one we have on file that we’ve been faxing things to all this time.”
A shudder of horror shot through me. This was about to turn into Barbara Turdmurkle faxing things to the wrong state all over again.
“No, really, I can call them and get the number, if you like. No problem at all,” I said.
She said, no, that it was fine. She had the number, so she'd just fax it over and put it to the attention of Mr. Loquacious in the body shop. After all it was the number they’d been using all along, right?
Yeah, but recent events heavily indicated a disconnect in fax communications between your two companies, I thought.
I tried explaining that King Subaru is a sprawling, multi-building complex and any fax sent to a central machine there would not likely be forwarded to the correct department with any speed at all. No, no. It would be fine, she said. I shouldn’t trouble myself.
I gave it a half hour of radio silence before calling King about it. Now, readers, you may want to sit down for this revelation: they’d had no faxes. I know. Shocking! The guy there, who was not Mr. Loquacious, said he was sitting right by the fax machine and nothing had come through for hours. He suggested this was some kind of ploy on insurance's part in order to keep from paying on time. I very nearly told him to shut the hell up, since he was talking to a guy who'd been defending his ass all morning, with no real just cause for doing so. Instead, I asked for his fax machine's number and called insurance back to tell them to start over. They were as shocked and appalled about the news of their earlier fax's failure as you'd expect.
This time it took only 20 minutes before King called me with the good news. My car had been released. Of course, there was then the matter of getting to King Subaru while at the same time leaving my wife’s car at her clinic, so she could drive it home. So I asked King Subaru to send a driver to meet me there and give me a lift over.
The driver showed up on time and rocketed me over, arriving a full 15 minutes before closing time. After finishing up the paperwork, the man who was not Mr. Loquacious said that there actually was a difference in the price he'd billed and the price that insurance had approved. But it was only $20, so he decided to just eat it. I told him that if I had only known that morning that I was going to have to do ALL the legwork for my insurance company, I could have just saved everyone a lot of time and done it all then. Or, better still, two days before. He smiled and nodded and handed me my keys.
The car drove great and got up the two major hills of my still icy neighborhood with hardly a fishtail. My driveway, however, said, “No, I don't think so.” I made it not even half way up it before the all wheel drive warning light began to shine and the car began sliding back down the hill until my braking finally slowed it. I had to turn around in the yard and leave it there, hoofing it up. The wife, too, could get no further during her arrival some hours later.
EPILOGUE
My in-laws came for Christmas Thursday night, and my father-in-law gave me one of the best early presents he could have: advice. “Maybe you should get your tires studded,” he said.
Now, I’d heard of studded tires before, but had no real inkling what this meant. My mental image was of little cones of rubber sticking out of the tires, like the Nazi Warwheel the Blackhawks used to fight in DC Comics. I’d never seen anything like that on the road, though. Turns out, studded tires look very much like regular tires that someone drove a series of nails into, all the way to the head. But I didn’t know that at this point.
Pa said that everybody back in Alaska gets studded tires during the winter months. Often, they have two complete sets of tires and trade out the studded set come spring thaw.
“You get your front tires studded, you’ll have no trouble getting up these hills,” he said.
I very much liked the sound of that. Why the hell hadn’t anyone told me about this before? This is the sort of thing that should be in a WV Handbook, given to you when you become a resident. It would fall somewhere between the chapters “Ramps and the Proper DeStankification There From” and “Moonshine: If you Have to Ask, You Already Drank Too Much.”
On Christmas Eve morning, after two more spectacular failures at getting up the driveway, I set out to buy a new set of studded front tires. Turned out, though, it was no good to get new front tires on an all wheel drive car with 30k miles on it. It would upset the differential. So I decided to go with four new winter tires and stud the front ones.
King Subaru even said they could fit me in as the last customer of their early closing day if I could get there by 11:30. Oddly, they tried to dissuade me from the studding on the grounds that most Subaru owners get by fine with just a good set of winter tires.
"They don't live in my neighborhood," I said. I added that the ice had already taught me the hard lesson that you can't drive through a boulder. The guy said he thought he recognized my name from the body shop roster.
Apparently the studding technicians went a little overboard, because they wound up studding all four tires. I didn’t care. It was about $16 more for twice as much stability, as far as I was concerned. The job itself seemed to draw some interest from some of the other employees at King, too. As I was paying for the job and was about to take my old tires and go home, one of them asked where the neighborhood was that gave me such trouble with ice. I told him.
“Oh, lord, yes,” he said, recognizing the area. “You’ll be lucky if some of your roads see sunlight before spring. Those tires will do you great. Unless you get two feet of snow, or something, you’ll be just fine.”
By the time I arrived home, the sun had indeed been out and my driveway was ice-free and practically dry. I didn’t have long to wait to test the new tires, though. From late Christmas Eve through Monday morning, it snowed and snowed. It might very well be the first White Christmas I’ve ever experienced—though how I’ve managed to avoid one after nearly 10 years in this state, I’m not sure.
The studded tires are amazing things. Driving on ice and snow feels pretty much like driving on dry pavement. Granted, I’m not abusing them and am still cautious, but just knowing they’re there makes me feel a lot safer. We’re even talking about getting a set for Mrs. Alaska Pants.
SECOND EPILOGUE
As of this writing, I’ve still not seen any jury duty. In fact, my wife and I are neck and neck for who's spent more time in the courthouse, as she was subpoenaed to appear as a witness in a case, testifying in her capacity as a physician. My particular jury group has been postponed for another few days, so it'll be a while before we see if the floor of the courthouse feels the imprint of my mighty snowboot again.
“I have no idea,” I said. After all, I’ve never had cause to fax anybody in all this. I tried to look it up on King Subaru’s website, but it was not listed among the myriad of numbers they list.
“Well, I’ll just use this one,” the agent said. “It’s the one we have on file that we’ve been faxing things to all this time.”
A shudder of horror shot through me. This was about to turn into Barbara Turdmurkle faxing things to the wrong state all over again.
“No, really, I can call them and get the number, if you like. No problem at all,” I said.
She said, no, that it was fine. She had the number, so she'd just fax it over and put it to the attention of Mr. Loquacious in the body shop. After all it was the number they’d been using all along, right?
Yeah, but recent events heavily indicated a disconnect in fax communications between your two companies, I thought.
I tried explaining that King Subaru is a sprawling, multi-building complex and any fax sent to a central machine there would not likely be forwarded to the correct department with any speed at all. No, no. It would be fine, she said. I shouldn’t trouble myself.
I gave it a half hour of radio silence before calling King about it. Now, readers, you may want to sit down for this revelation: they’d had no faxes. I know. Shocking! The guy there, who was not Mr. Loquacious, said he was sitting right by the fax machine and nothing had come through for hours. He suggested this was some kind of ploy on insurance's part in order to keep from paying on time. I very nearly told him to shut the hell up, since he was talking to a guy who'd been defending his ass all morning, with no real just cause for doing so. Instead, I asked for his fax machine's number and called insurance back to tell them to start over. They were as shocked and appalled about the news of their earlier fax's failure as you'd expect.
This time it took only 20 minutes before King called me with the good news. My car had been released. Of course, there was then the matter of getting to King Subaru while at the same time leaving my wife’s car at her clinic, so she could drive it home. So I asked King Subaru to send a driver to meet me there and give me a lift over.
The driver showed up on time and rocketed me over, arriving a full 15 minutes before closing time. After finishing up the paperwork, the man who was not Mr. Loquacious said that there actually was a difference in the price he'd billed and the price that insurance had approved. But it was only $20, so he decided to just eat it. I told him that if I had only known that morning that I was going to have to do ALL the legwork for my insurance company, I could have just saved everyone a lot of time and done it all then. Or, better still, two days before. He smiled and nodded and handed me my keys.
The car drove great and got up the two major hills of my still icy neighborhood with hardly a fishtail. My driveway, however, said, “No, I don't think so.” I made it not even half way up it before the all wheel drive warning light began to shine and the car began sliding back down the hill until my braking finally slowed it. I had to turn around in the yard and leave it there, hoofing it up. The wife, too, could get no further during her arrival some hours later.
EPILOGUE
My in-laws came for Christmas Thursday night, and my father-in-law gave me one of the best early presents he could have: advice. “Maybe you should get your tires studded,” he said.
Now, I’d heard of studded tires before, but had no real inkling what this meant. My mental image was of little cones of rubber sticking out of the tires, like the Nazi Warwheel the Blackhawks used to fight in DC Comics. I’d never seen anything like that on the road, though. Turns out, studded tires look very much like regular tires that someone drove a series of nails into, all the way to the head. But I didn’t know that at this point.
Pa said that everybody back in Alaska gets studded tires during the winter months. Often, they have two complete sets of tires and trade out the studded set come spring thaw.
“You get your front tires studded, you’ll have no trouble getting up these hills,” he said.
I very much liked the sound of that. Why the hell hadn’t anyone told me about this before? This is the sort of thing that should be in a WV Handbook, given to you when you become a resident. It would fall somewhere between the chapters “Ramps and the Proper DeStankification There From” and “Moonshine: If you Have to Ask, You Already Drank Too Much.”
On Christmas Eve morning, after two more spectacular failures at getting up the driveway, I set out to buy a new set of studded front tires. Turned out, though, it was no good to get new front tires on an all wheel drive car with 30k miles on it. It would upset the differential. So I decided to go with four new winter tires and stud the front ones.
King Subaru even said they could fit me in as the last customer of their early closing day if I could get there by 11:30. Oddly, they tried to dissuade me from the studding on the grounds that most Subaru owners get by fine with just a good set of winter tires.
"They don't live in my neighborhood," I said. I added that the ice had already taught me the hard lesson that you can't drive through a boulder. The guy said he thought he recognized my name from the body shop roster.
Apparently the studding technicians went a little overboard, because they wound up studding all four tires. I didn’t care. It was about $16 more for twice as much stability, as far as I was concerned. The job itself seemed to draw some interest from some of the other employees at King, too. As I was paying for the job and was about to take my old tires and go home, one of them asked where the neighborhood was that gave me such trouble with ice. I told him.
“Oh, lord, yes,” he said, recognizing the area. “You’ll be lucky if some of your roads see sunlight before spring. Those tires will do you great. Unless you get two feet of snow, or something, you’ll be just fine.”
By the time I arrived home, the sun had indeed been out and my driveway was ice-free and practically dry. I didn’t have long to wait to test the new tires, though. From late Christmas Eve through Monday morning, it snowed and snowed. It might very well be the first White Christmas I’ve ever experienced—though how I’ve managed to avoid one after nearly 10 years in this state, I’m not sure.
The studded tires are amazing things. Driving on ice and snow feels pretty much like driving on dry pavement. Granted, I’m not abusing them and am still cautious, but just knowing they’re there makes me feel a lot safer. We’re even talking about getting a set for Mrs. Alaska Pants.
SECOND EPILOGUE
As of this writing, I’ve still not seen any jury duty. In fact, my wife and I are neck and neck for who's spent more time in the courthouse, as she was subpoenaed to appear as a witness in a case, testifying in her capacity as a physician. My particular jury group has been postponed for another few days, so it'll be a while before we see if the floor of the courthouse feels the imprint of my mighty snowboot again.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tales from the Lost Months: Jury Duty Ice Road Trucking/Subaruing Blues (PART 6)
The next day, December 23, shortly after 9 a.m., I gathered my strength and called King Subaru again. They’d still heard nothing from the insurance appraiser. I sighed. More calls to the insurance company would be required and I could already predict the sort of delays inherent with the process. It was at that moment I decided that no matter which side was right or wrong in the matter (which I’d never ever be able to determine anyway, since both sides were blame-shifting like champions) it was time to pick a side in the fight and see if I couldn’t turn the tide of the battle in favor of that side.
So I picked King Subaru's side; not that I thought they were faultless by any stretch but ultimately because they were in physical possession of my car. My plan was to call the insurance company and if I was not immediately offered a satisfactory resolution to the matter I would begin showing as much ass as I needed to—in a verbal directional application of my ire sense—in order to get my car back in my possession before the day was out. It was already December 23, when most folks (including, I suspect, those working for the independent appraisal company) were already phoning in their jobs due to the proximity to the Christmas holiday weekend, so chances of getting anything done on the 24th were nil. This had to be finished today or I wasn't going to see the car until after Christmas. So I limbered up my ass and gave insurance a call.
After the whole explanation and agent researching the matter process, my new insurance rep phoned the independent appraisal company to find out what was up. She returned to the line shortly to say that my supplemental claim had still not yet been reviewed and the IAC had noted that it would likely take 24 to 48 hours for them to get around to it. She suggested I should probably think about calling back in about a day.
“Well, see, this puts me in something of a bind,” I said.
Then I took a super deep breath and in pretty much one long sentence reiterated for the record how even though my vehicle had been repaired for two full days now, I still couldn’t touch it because the independent appraisal company hadn’t approved the payment for it—independent appraisers who, I might and did add, had only initially approved $700 for a car that was SO VERY OBVIOUSLY going to be far more damaged than a dented bumper cover, a price differential which, I then suggested, had at the very least laid the groundwork for the price discrepancy issues the IAC was now having with King Subaru—a payment, which I had been assured when I first inquired about the lowball $700 figure two weeks prior, would be no problem at all and that insurance would pay for any and all other repairs that King found during their own inspection, and that said payments to be made directly to King Subaru; which now brought us to the matter of the IAC's assertion that they’d not received the supplemental claim until December 21st, when my dealership asserted they’d sent it on December 16th—a matter which seemed to be the crux of much of the blame-shifting going on, that was muddying the waters nicely but not getting me my car back any faster—a car, which, by the by, I hadn’t laid eyes on since December 6th, meaning I'd not had access to my own personal transportation in all that time, transportation that I required and which I could have very quickly if only the IAC would make the approval of the supplemental claim—a claim, again, that I'd been assured would not be a problem for them to make in the first place. *BREATHE*
The agent listened to my lengthy, calm-yet-firm rant and then said, “But, sir, they have to have time to review the documents. It takes at least 24 hours.”
“They’ve had the documents since December 21,” I said. “It is now December 23.”
The agent did the math, seemed a bit flummoxed at a response to this, but added that there was little she could do except mark the claim as one to be expedited.
“I was already told that my claim was being expedited back on December 21," I said. "It is now December 23.”
The agent had no real answer for this, but did seem annoyed with me—as well she should. She gamely tried another approach.
“Sir, if you like, I can call the appraisal company again and ask if they can tell me how long it should take them.”
“Yes. Please call and ask them that. I would really like to know so I can plan things here accordingly.”
Yeah, I’m an ass. But they started it.
Minutes passed on hold. Then the agent returned and sounded almost disappointed to report that the IAC had just approved the supplemental claim in full.
“Oh, that’s outstanding,” I said.
She told me next that it would take a couple of hours for the IAC and insurance to get all the details in order, but one of the appraisers would then call me to let me know the details and then they would send word to King Subaru along with a fax of the check they were writing for the full amount.
“Thanks so much for all your work,” I said, voice dripping with saccharine sweetness.
Of course, four hours later, at 1:30p, I’d heard from no one. My going theory on this was that the amount the IAC had approved and the amount King Subaru had billed were probably not the same figure despite claims of them approving the full amount. I imagined there was currently a quiet war of faxes going on along our nation’s phone lines. However, upon putting in a call, King Subaru said they had not even heard about the approval, let alone received any faxes of checks.
Motherpussbucket!!!
(TO BE CONCLUDED...)
So I picked King Subaru's side; not that I thought they were faultless by any stretch but ultimately because they were in physical possession of my car. My plan was to call the insurance company and if I was not immediately offered a satisfactory resolution to the matter I would begin showing as much ass as I needed to—in a verbal directional application of my ire sense—in order to get my car back in my possession before the day was out. It was already December 23, when most folks (including, I suspect, those working for the independent appraisal company) were already phoning in their jobs due to the proximity to the Christmas holiday weekend, so chances of getting anything done on the 24th were nil. This had to be finished today or I wasn't going to see the car until after Christmas. So I limbered up my ass and gave insurance a call.
After the whole explanation and agent researching the matter process, my new insurance rep phoned the independent appraisal company to find out what was up. She returned to the line shortly to say that my supplemental claim had still not yet been reviewed and the IAC had noted that it would likely take 24 to 48 hours for them to get around to it. She suggested I should probably think about calling back in about a day.
“Well, see, this puts me in something of a bind,” I said.
Then I took a super deep breath and in pretty much one long sentence reiterated for the record how even though my vehicle had been repaired for two full days now, I still couldn’t touch it because the independent appraisal company hadn’t approved the payment for it—independent appraisers who, I might and did add, had only initially approved $700 for a car that was SO VERY OBVIOUSLY going to be far more damaged than a dented bumper cover, a price differential which, I then suggested, had at the very least laid the groundwork for the price discrepancy issues the IAC was now having with King Subaru—a payment, which I had been assured when I first inquired about the lowball $700 figure two weeks prior, would be no problem at all and that insurance would pay for any and all other repairs that King found during their own inspection, and that said payments to be made directly to King Subaru; which now brought us to the matter of the IAC's assertion that they’d not received the supplemental claim until December 21st, when my dealership asserted they’d sent it on December 16th—a matter which seemed to be the crux of much of the blame-shifting going on, that was muddying the waters nicely but not getting me my car back any faster—a car, which, by the by, I hadn’t laid eyes on since December 6th, meaning I'd not had access to my own personal transportation in all that time, transportation that I required and which I could have very quickly if only the IAC would make the approval of the supplemental claim—a claim, again, that I'd been assured would not be a problem for them to make in the first place. *BREATHE*
The agent listened to my lengthy, calm-yet-firm rant and then said, “But, sir, they have to have time to review the documents. It takes at least 24 hours.”
“They’ve had the documents since December 21,” I said. “It is now December 23.”
The agent did the math, seemed a bit flummoxed at a response to this, but added that there was little she could do except mark the claim as one to be expedited.
“I was already told that my claim was being expedited back on December 21," I said. "It is now December 23.”
The agent had no real answer for this, but did seem annoyed with me—as well she should. She gamely tried another approach.
“Sir, if you like, I can call the appraisal company again and ask if they can tell me how long it should take them.”
“Yes. Please call and ask them that. I would really like to know so I can plan things here accordingly.”
Yeah, I’m an ass. But they started it.
Minutes passed on hold. Then the agent returned and sounded almost disappointed to report that the IAC had just approved the supplemental claim in full.
“Oh, that’s outstanding,” I said.
She told me next that it would take a couple of hours for the IAC and insurance to get all the details in order, but one of the appraisers would then call me to let me know the details and then they would send word to King Subaru along with a fax of the check they were writing for the full amount.
“Thanks so much for all your work,” I said, voice dripping with saccharine sweetness.
Of course, four hours later, at 1:30p, I’d heard from no one. My going theory on this was that the amount the IAC had approved and the amount King Subaru had billed were probably not the same figure despite claims of them approving the full amount. I imagined there was currently a quiet war of faxes going on along our nation’s phone lines. However, upon putting in a call, King Subaru said they had not even heard about the approval, let alone received any faxes of checks.
Motherpussbucket!!!
(TO BE CONCLUDED...)
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Tales from the Lost Months: Jury Duty Ice Road Trucking/Subaruing Blues (PART 5)
On December 21, the day before my first jury duty session was scheduled, King Subaru phoned to let me know the car would be ready to pick up on the following day, a full three days earlier than anticipated. The catch, though, was that the cost of repairs had ballooned to over $4k, which they said insurance would have to both approve and provide proof of payment for before King could release the car to me. The other catch, they mentioned, was that while they'd sent the supplemental claim on the additional costs to the insurance company some time back, they'd yet to hear anything about approval. I offered to give insurance a call to get the ball rolling. And this I did.
Insurance put me on hold and called the independent appraisal company to find out what the delay was. The IAC, in turn, claimed they’d had no contact with King Subaru whatsoever, let alone received any supplemental claims for them to approve. I found this a little dubious, as I was the guy who'd given someone from their office King Subaru’s number when they’d called me by mistake.
With me still on hold, insurance then called King Subaru to find out what was going on from their end. Now here's where the story gets even murkier. After the insurance agent came back on the line and told me the above story from the IAC, she said that she was a bit disturbed because King Subaru had just told her that they really hadn't faxed the supplemental claim to anyone because they didn’t have a correct fax number to send it to. This also struck me as odd, because while it was consistent with the story from the IAC, King’s body shop is accustomed to dealing with insurance agencies and being paid by them on a daily basis and getting a fax number for one would be a simple matter of a phone call or a quick search online.
The insurance agent told me that she’d now given King the correct fax number for her own office and she would forward the documents to the appraiser’s office as soon as she received them. The insurance agent also said she would mark it to be expedited so I could get the car back ASAP. Since the time was nearly 5 o'clock, I knew nothing would come of it that day.
The following day, December 22, I headed out early with the wife. She had a doctor's appointment and I had jury duty, so I waited til her appointment was through, then we ate breakfast at our favorite biscuit place before she was to drop me off at the courthouse. I’d called the jury hotline the night before to make sure they still had me scheduled, and they did. However, a quick 8:30 phone call to the hotline, as advised by the hotline the previous evening, revealed that jury duty had been canceled altogether through the first week of January. Merry Christmas, indeed. See ya next year, suckers!
Back home, I kept waiting for a call from someone—ANYONE—regarding my car being ready for me to pick up, but received none. Around 1p, I phoned King Subaru, but they said they’d heard nothing either. So I phoned the insurance company to see what was up.
I got a new agent on the line (who all work for a central insurance agent assigned to my claim), and had to explain the whole case and how my fully repaired vehicle, which I’d not seen in half a month, would not be released to me until the IAC did some approving of funds. The new agent in turn phoned the independent appraisal company to see what was up. After a long time on hold, the agent came back and confirmed that the appraisers had now officially received the supplemental and had given it a cursory review, but were not going to approve it yet because it was for an amount greater than the one they’d initially approved.
“You mean the $700 for the new bumper cover?” I asked. Evidently it was. However, their concerns were not so much that costs were now for $3500 more than they’d approved, but that King Subaru had decided to raise their labor costs beyond the initially approved amount as well. The agent then put me back on hold to call King about this.
An enormous amount of time then passed before the agent returned to the line, sounding thoroughly disgusted. She said that despite King allegedly having admitted that they'd not sent the supplemental until December 21, they were now claiming they’d sent it back on the 16th. This and the increase in the labor costs found in the supplemental were red flags as far as the insurance company was concerned. She said she'd tried to assure them that insurance would pay them for their work, but they would take nothing less than a photocopy of the actual payment check, for the full amount they were billing, faxed to them before they would release my car.
According to her, all the delays were King Subaru’s fault. She then asked if she could put me back on hold and call the IAC again to see if more expedition could be put on the approval process for my case.
While I was on hold, King Subaru buzzed in on call waiting, so I clicked over to talk to them. It was King's body shop guy, let's call him Mr. Loquacious. I quickly let him know I didn't have time to talk much, as I was on the other line with insurance. I tried to ask him about some of the inconsistencies I was hearing about, but he started talking over me and would not shut up. He just wanted to let me know he’d just spoken with the insurance agent and to assure me that it was wholly my insurance company’s fault that things were so gummed up with the car, which he just felt so bad about holding onto.
“Yeah, as I mentioned, I’m on hold with them right now,” I said. “They say it’s your fault for not faxing in the supplemental sooner.”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Loquacious said. “We faxed that all in on the 16th.” The body shop guy then spent the better part of a minute reiterating his earlier statement about it being the insurance company’s fault and how he was only looking to get paid the amount he was owed and couldn’t release the car until they proved it because they could always say they would send it, but then only approve a lesser amount and then he’d be screwed. While he was doing this, I kept trying to interrupt him so I could tell him I had to go because, as I'd mentioned twice, I was still on hold with insurance. Mr. Loquacious still refused to shut it. Now I could see why it had taken the insurance agent so long when she'd called them earlier.
Finally, I just interrupted him long enough to say, “I’m sorry, but I really have to go now. I’m on hold with the insurance company waiting to hear if they’ll approve the—"
“Well, I won’t take much of your time, then," he began anew. "I just wanted to take a minute to call and let you know…” and then he began right back down the same path of explanation as before in almost exactly the same words. It reminded me of talking to Wal-Mart Jesus from my “Liberry” days.
Drastic steps would have to be taken.
“Listen! I understand that you want to be paid! I want you to be paid, too! But I’m going to need to CALL. YOU. BACK. because I am ON. HOLD. WITH. THE INSURANCE COMPANY. RIGHT. NOW.”
Reluctantly, Mr. Loquacious shut up and let me go.
When the insurance agent at last returned to the line, she said that she’d had no success with the IAC. The guy whose job it was to review documents was out for the afternoon and wouldn’t return until very late in the workday. Chances were not at all good that he’d get it approved and faxed over to King before 5p.
I remained quiet for a long time after she gave me the news. I was frustrated and furious and really wanted to scream at someone, but wasn't sure who precisely needed my ire aimed at them. Everyone was pointing fingers at each other as though covering their own asses, but since I was damned if I could figure out who was in the wrong I figured I’d better just be quiet about it until I figured it out. I thanked the insurance agent for her time and hung up.
After a bit more thought, I decided to call Mr. Loquacious back and see what his explanation for the inconsistencies and price gouging might be.
BIG. HONKING. MISTAKE.
Mr. Loquacious, you see, is either a certifiable genius or touched by more than a dusting of “the re re.” Maybe both. Throughout our largely one-sided conversation, he displayed a complete yet somehow still polite disregard for the basic rules of common conversation and poured forth such a river of words, with oft-repeated paragraphs floating in it, that it had the effect of driving me so bug EFF insane that I no longer gave a wet damn who was right or who was wrong just as long as he shut up about it.
Oh, believe me, I tried to ask about the inconsistencies in his earlier testimony concerning when and if he faxed the supplemental, but he replied to this with a filibuster Strom Thurmond would have been proud to have improvised. Apparently, there were no inconsistencies at all, because while he might have said something about not having faxed the supplemental, it turned out he was mistaken and his estimator actually had, on the 16th. As far as he was concerned, this was all just a trick by the insurance company designed to keep from having to pay out what they owed. Furthermore, the price increase was dismissed as a simple increase to rates common for our area which the insurance company was legally obligated to pay out at. He assured me that there was no ethical violation there, because all body shops do that sort of thing.
I then valliantly attempted to point out that his rate increase was the very thing that was causing all the delays now, but this was met with an almost verbatim repeat of ALL PREVIOUS SPEECHIFYING, with the added bonus info that the insurance company now had the gall to try and guilt him into providing me with a loaner vehicle until our matter was resolved. He didn’t think he was obligated to because he wasn’t in the wrong. Oh, but he’d do it in a hot second if he had thought he was in the wrong. (This was the first time the word loaner had ever come up and I wasn't sure why he'd brought it up, except that he was probably concerned that the insurance company had suggested it to me and was trying to head me off at the pass.) And then, with stones so huge that he must have been pinned immobile in his chair by them, he managed to end his soliloquy by saying, “I just feel like I’m the guy caught in the middle here.”
“Uh, no,” I corrected. “I believe I’m the guy caught in the middle here.”
He conceded that this was probably true, then went back for take three of his lengthy verbatim explanation from before. And he never seemed angry or upset, even when I’d been confrontational with him. He just calmly and doggedly kept forcing the same information at me until I finally threw up my hands and gave up. I explained that this was my first time going through an accident like this and I didn't know exactly how such things worked. Hopefully it would all work out shortly and he'd get his money and I'd get my car and we could all have a merry Christmas and a happy new year goodbye. *CLICK*
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Insurance put me on hold and called the independent appraisal company to find out what the delay was. The IAC, in turn, claimed they’d had no contact with King Subaru whatsoever, let alone received any supplemental claims for them to approve. I found this a little dubious, as I was the guy who'd given someone from their office King Subaru’s number when they’d called me by mistake.
With me still on hold, insurance then called King Subaru to find out what was going on from their end. Now here's where the story gets even murkier. After the insurance agent came back on the line and told me the above story from the IAC, she said that she was a bit disturbed because King Subaru had just told her that they really hadn't faxed the supplemental claim to anyone because they didn’t have a correct fax number to send it to. This also struck me as odd, because while it was consistent with the story from the IAC, King’s body shop is accustomed to dealing with insurance agencies and being paid by them on a daily basis and getting a fax number for one would be a simple matter of a phone call or a quick search online.
The insurance agent told me that she’d now given King the correct fax number for her own office and she would forward the documents to the appraiser’s office as soon as she received them. The insurance agent also said she would mark it to be expedited so I could get the car back ASAP. Since the time was nearly 5 o'clock, I knew nothing would come of it that day.
The following day, December 22, I headed out early with the wife. She had a doctor's appointment and I had jury duty, so I waited til her appointment was through, then we ate breakfast at our favorite biscuit place before she was to drop me off at the courthouse. I’d called the jury hotline the night before to make sure they still had me scheduled, and they did. However, a quick 8:30 phone call to the hotline, as advised by the hotline the previous evening, revealed that jury duty had been canceled altogether through the first week of January. Merry Christmas, indeed. See ya next year, suckers!
Back home, I kept waiting for a call from someone—ANYONE—regarding my car being ready for me to pick up, but received none. Around 1p, I phoned King Subaru, but they said they’d heard nothing either. So I phoned the insurance company to see what was up.
I got a new agent on the line (who all work for a central insurance agent assigned to my claim), and had to explain the whole case and how my fully repaired vehicle, which I’d not seen in half a month, would not be released to me until the IAC did some approving of funds. The new agent in turn phoned the independent appraisal company to see what was up. After a long time on hold, the agent came back and confirmed that the appraisers had now officially received the supplemental and had given it a cursory review, but were not going to approve it yet because it was for an amount greater than the one they’d initially approved.
“You mean the $700 for the new bumper cover?” I asked. Evidently it was. However, their concerns were not so much that costs were now for $3500 more than they’d approved, but that King Subaru had decided to raise their labor costs beyond the initially approved amount as well. The agent then put me back on hold to call King about this.
An enormous amount of time then passed before the agent returned to the line, sounding thoroughly disgusted. She said that despite King allegedly having admitted that they'd not sent the supplemental until December 21, they were now claiming they’d sent it back on the 16th. This and the increase in the labor costs found in the supplemental were red flags as far as the insurance company was concerned. She said she'd tried to assure them that insurance would pay them for their work, but they would take nothing less than a photocopy of the actual payment check, for the full amount they were billing, faxed to them before they would release my car.
According to her, all the delays were King Subaru’s fault. She then asked if she could put me back on hold and call the IAC again to see if more expedition could be put on the approval process for my case.
While I was on hold, King Subaru buzzed in on call waiting, so I clicked over to talk to them. It was King's body shop guy, let's call him Mr. Loquacious. I quickly let him know I didn't have time to talk much, as I was on the other line with insurance. I tried to ask him about some of the inconsistencies I was hearing about, but he started talking over me and would not shut up. He just wanted to let me know he’d just spoken with the insurance agent and to assure me that it was wholly my insurance company’s fault that things were so gummed up with the car, which he just felt so bad about holding onto.
“Yeah, as I mentioned, I’m on hold with them right now,” I said. “They say it’s your fault for not faxing in the supplemental sooner.”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Loquacious said. “We faxed that all in on the 16th.” The body shop guy then spent the better part of a minute reiterating his earlier statement about it being the insurance company’s fault and how he was only looking to get paid the amount he was owed and couldn’t release the car until they proved it because they could always say they would send it, but then only approve a lesser amount and then he’d be screwed. While he was doing this, I kept trying to interrupt him so I could tell him I had to go because, as I'd mentioned twice, I was still on hold with insurance. Mr. Loquacious still refused to shut it. Now I could see why it had taken the insurance agent so long when she'd called them earlier.
Finally, I just interrupted him long enough to say, “I’m sorry, but I really have to go now. I’m on hold with the insurance company waiting to hear if they’ll approve the—"
“Well, I won’t take much of your time, then," he began anew. "I just wanted to take a minute to call and let you know…” and then he began right back down the same path of explanation as before in almost exactly the same words. It reminded me of talking to Wal-Mart Jesus from my “Liberry” days.
Drastic steps would have to be taken.
“Listen! I understand that you want to be paid! I want you to be paid, too! But I’m going to need to CALL. YOU. BACK. because I am ON. HOLD. WITH. THE INSURANCE COMPANY. RIGHT. NOW.”
Reluctantly, Mr. Loquacious shut up and let me go.
When the insurance agent at last returned to the line, she said that she’d had no success with the IAC. The guy whose job it was to review documents was out for the afternoon and wouldn’t return until very late in the workday. Chances were not at all good that he’d get it approved and faxed over to King before 5p.
I remained quiet for a long time after she gave me the news. I was frustrated and furious and really wanted to scream at someone, but wasn't sure who precisely needed my ire aimed at them. Everyone was pointing fingers at each other as though covering their own asses, but since I was damned if I could figure out who was in the wrong I figured I’d better just be quiet about it until I figured it out. I thanked the insurance agent for her time and hung up.
After a bit more thought, I decided to call Mr. Loquacious back and see what his explanation for the inconsistencies and price gouging might be.
BIG. HONKING. MISTAKE.
Mr. Loquacious, you see, is either a certifiable genius or touched by more than a dusting of “the re re.” Maybe both. Throughout our largely one-sided conversation, he displayed a complete yet somehow still polite disregard for the basic rules of common conversation and poured forth such a river of words, with oft-repeated paragraphs floating in it, that it had the effect of driving me so bug EFF insane that I no longer gave a wet damn who was right or who was wrong just as long as he shut up about it.
Oh, believe me, I tried to ask about the inconsistencies in his earlier testimony concerning when and if he faxed the supplemental, but he replied to this with a filibuster Strom Thurmond would have been proud to have improvised. Apparently, there were no inconsistencies at all, because while he might have said something about not having faxed the supplemental, it turned out he was mistaken and his estimator actually had, on the 16th. As far as he was concerned, this was all just a trick by the insurance company designed to keep from having to pay out what they owed. Furthermore, the price increase was dismissed as a simple increase to rates common for our area which the insurance company was legally obligated to pay out at. He assured me that there was no ethical violation there, because all body shops do that sort of thing.
I then valliantly attempted to point out that his rate increase was the very thing that was causing all the delays now, but this was met with an almost verbatim repeat of ALL PREVIOUS SPEECHIFYING, with the added bonus info that the insurance company now had the gall to try and guilt him into providing me with a loaner vehicle until our matter was resolved. He didn’t think he was obligated to because he wasn’t in the wrong. Oh, but he’d do it in a hot second if he had thought he was in the wrong. (This was the first time the word loaner had ever come up and I wasn't sure why he'd brought it up, except that he was probably concerned that the insurance company had suggested it to me and was trying to head me off at the pass.) And then, with stones so huge that he must have been pinned immobile in his chair by them, he managed to end his soliloquy by saying, “I just feel like I’m the guy caught in the middle here.”
“Uh, no,” I corrected. “I believe I’m the guy caught in the middle here.”
He conceded that this was probably true, then went back for take three of his lengthy verbatim explanation from before. And he never seemed angry or upset, even when I’d been confrontational with him. He just calmly and doggedly kept forcing the same information at me until I finally threw up my hands and gave up. I explained that this was my first time going through an accident like this and I didn't know exactly how such things worked. Hopefully it would all work out shortly and he'd get his money and I'd get my car and we could all have a merry Christmas and a happy new year goodbye. *CLICK*
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Tales from the Lost Months: Jury Duty Ice Road Trucking/Subaruing Blues (PART 4)
The first few days without a car were fine because the wife was still out from work on sick leave, resulting from a three day stay in the hospital with bilateral pneumonia. (Another lost tale for another time.) Fortunately, by the time of my crash, she was through the worst of it and on the road to the mend. Being from Alaska and therefore fearless on icy roads, the wife was fine driving us around when we needed to be out. However, once she was finished with sick leave, she made me get back on the driving horse and face my fears so that I would be able to drop her off and pick her up from work.This would have been fine with me, except the weather didn’t improve and it continued to snow more. The first night I had to pick her up, I spent the better part of an hour walking up and down the blind curve, flinging gravel out so the road would have some traction for me when I drove down at 9 plus o'clock at night. And even then I had her on speakerphone as I drove it so she could talk me through my first trip down the icy slope and serve as an audio witness to my demise should I take a tumble down Mr. Costello's yard. The trip was fine, though, with no slippage on the well-graveled road.
A few days into the icy stretch, the temperatures warmed enough to cause a lot of the ice to melt a little. Not enough to clear the roads, but enough to cause the snow to refreeze into an icy sheet in front of our house. I got to see just how slick it was. Having been unable to get more than a 4th of the way up the driveway, I later was attempting to leave and backed down that quarter driveway to the road itself, then proceeded slowly down the road in what I thought was 1st gear. Turns out, though, I was in reverse the whole time, but somehow the road was so slick that just the spin of the tires in reverse direction was enough to break the friction and keep me sliding forward. That makes you feel safe. After a few such trips, my wussiness faded and I got my snow legs back. I was still extremely cautious, but between me and the rest of the neighbors graveling the path, I never had any more close calls.
As for the car, it took the better part of three days for an insurance adjuster to be dispatched to Borderland to have a look at the damage. It took an additional day for anyone to tell me about it. In the end, I had to call King Subaru to find out that, yes, the adjuster had been there and gone, but they hadn't left any sort of damage estimate or report, preferring to fax that back to them once the adjuster was back at the home office. Eventually an agent of my insurance company phoned to give me the news. She said the damage estimate was around $750 to cover parts and labor to replace the bumper cover.
I was floored. The bumper cover was the only damage? Wow, they really DO make Subaru's tough! Still, my suspension of disbelief only went so far.
“There wasn’t any other damage?” I asked. “You do know I drove into a very large rock, right?”
The agent explained that the bumper cover was all that was mentioned in the estimate, though there was always the possibility that there was more damage within. The body shop at King Subaru would give it a look and if they found anything they would then let the insurance company know and insurance would pay King for it directly, since I’d already met my deductible with the bumper cover alone. Pretty sweet, I thought.
A day or two later, King Subaru phoned to let me know that there was indeed quite a bit more damage found, to the tune of over $3500. Among the number of things that needed to be replaced or repaired were a bent front tire hub, the passenger side control arm, and a radiator that had been pierced by spruce branches. If I was lucky, they said I might see my car again around Christmas Eve.
Wait a second, I thought. The radiator had been pierced by spruce branches, yet the insurance adjuster was only recommending a replacement for the bumper cover? What the hell? Some of the other stuff I could understand not being able to scope out in a quick inspection, but if the allegedly trained adjuster had opened the hood at all they should have noticed that the radiator was pierced by spruce branches, right? This didn't make sense to me. Someone was really paid money to drive from lord knows where all the way to Borderland to make a damage assessment and they hadn't even noticed spruce-branches penetrating my radiator at the bare minimum? Either this person was woefully bad at their job or there was something I was missing about how the process was supposed to work.
Turns out the missing info part was closer to the mark. During my next telephone call with insurance, I brought up the above matter on purely an information-gathering basis, rather than my usual bitter-complaining basis. The agent I asked about it said that the adjusters (who technically work for an independent, sub-contracted, third-party company) are only allowed to write down damage that they can see with their eyes. They're not allowed to touch the car in any way, so they were forbidden to pop the hood and have a gander at the damage within. This makes absolutely no sense to me, but what do I know about how insurance works? My next question, however, was: how the hell can I get that job, cause that sounds amazing! Getting paid to drive around just staring at cars and speaking their damage? Sign me up!
“Yep, that one’s damaged," I would say. "Dented bumper. I can see it right there, and I'm standing all of six feet away from it. Lemme mark that puppy down.”
Or, “Awww. Looks to me like someone keyed the ever-loving-shit out of this car's door. I’d be willing to bet the owner parked like an asshole at Wal-Mart, or something. That’s just unofficial speculation, mind you. I can’t actually see that.”
Or, “Well, that one’s really tore up. I can tell just by lookin’. Guy walk away from it? No? Oooh, that sucks. Yeah, by my eye, I’d say it’s pretty much a total loss. When he gets out of the hospital, we’ll send him a check. What? Universal Health Care got repealed? Oooh, sucks for that guy.”
Also, my jury duty date finally arrived, but when I phoned the jury hotline the night before I learned all jury service had been cancelled through December 22. Yay me.
For the next week or so, all was quiet, save for one call from an agent with the independent appraiser company who was trying to reach King Subaru and had, for some reason, been told that my number was the number to call. I had to look up King's correct number for her and told her to ask for the body shop. At least they were communicating, I thought.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
A few days into the icy stretch, the temperatures warmed enough to cause a lot of the ice to melt a little. Not enough to clear the roads, but enough to cause the snow to refreeze into an icy sheet in front of our house. I got to see just how slick it was. Having been unable to get more than a 4th of the way up the driveway, I later was attempting to leave and backed down that quarter driveway to the road itself, then proceeded slowly down the road in what I thought was 1st gear. Turns out, though, I was in reverse the whole time, but somehow the road was so slick that just the spin of the tires in reverse direction was enough to break the friction and keep me sliding forward. That makes you feel safe. After a few such trips, my wussiness faded and I got my snow legs back. I was still extremely cautious, but between me and the rest of the neighbors graveling the path, I never had any more close calls.
As for the car, it took the better part of three days for an insurance adjuster to be dispatched to Borderland to have a look at the damage. It took an additional day for anyone to tell me about it. In the end, I had to call King Subaru to find out that, yes, the adjuster had been there and gone, but they hadn't left any sort of damage estimate or report, preferring to fax that back to them once the adjuster was back at the home office. Eventually an agent of my insurance company phoned to give me the news. She said the damage estimate was around $750 to cover parts and labor to replace the bumper cover.
I was floored. The bumper cover was the only damage? Wow, they really DO make Subaru's tough! Still, my suspension of disbelief only went so far.
“There wasn’t any other damage?” I asked. “You do know I drove into a very large rock, right?”
The agent explained that the bumper cover was all that was mentioned in the estimate, though there was always the possibility that there was more damage within. The body shop at King Subaru would give it a look and if they found anything they would then let the insurance company know and insurance would pay King for it directly, since I’d already met my deductible with the bumper cover alone. Pretty sweet, I thought.
A day or two later, King Subaru phoned to let me know that there was indeed quite a bit more damage found, to the tune of over $3500. Among the number of things that needed to be replaced or repaired were a bent front tire hub, the passenger side control arm, and a radiator that had been pierced by spruce branches. If I was lucky, they said I might see my car again around Christmas Eve.
Wait a second, I thought. The radiator had been pierced by spruce branches, yet the insurance adjuster was only recommending a replacement for the bumper cover? What the hell? Some of the other stuff I could understand not being able to scope out in a quick inspection, but if the allegedly trained adjuster had opened the hood at all they should have noticed that the radiator was pierced by spruce branches, right? This didn't make sense to me. Someone was really paid money to drive from lord knows where all the way to Borderland to make a damage assessment and they hadn't even noticed spruce-branches penetrating my radiator at the bare minimum? Either this person was woefully bad at their job or there was something I was missing about how the process was supposed to work.
Turns out the missing info part was closer to the mark. During my next telephone call with insurance, I brought up the above matter on purely an information-gathering basis, rather than my usual bitter-complaining basis. The agent I asked about it said that the adjusters (who technically work for an independent, sub-contracted, third-party company) are only allowed to write down damage that they can see with their eyes. They're not allowed to touch the car in any way, so they were forbidden to pop the hood and have a gander at the damage within. This makes absolutely no sense to me, but what do I know about how insurance works? My next question, however, was: how the hell can I get that job, cause that sounds amazing! Getting paid to drive around just staring at cars and speaking their damage? Sign me up!
“Yep, that one’s damaged," I would say. "Dented bumper. I can see it right there, and I'm standing all of six feet away from it. Lemme mark that puppy down.”
Or, “Awww. Looks to me like someone keyed the ever-loving-shit out of this car's door. I’d be willing to bet the owner parked like an asshole at Wal-Mart, or something. That’s just unofficial speculation, mind you. I can’t actually see that.”
Or, “Well, that one’s really tore up. I can tell just by lookin’. Guy walk away from it? No? Oooh, that sucks. Yeah, by my eye, I’d say it’s pretty much a total loss. When he gets out of the hospital, we’ll send him a check. What? Universal Health Care got repealed? Oooh, sucks for that guy.”
Also, my jury duty date finally arrived, but when I phoned the jury hotline the night before I learned all jury service had been cancelled through December 22. Yay me.
For the next week or so, all was quiet, save for one call from an agent with the independent appraiser company who was trying to reach King Subaru and had, for some reason, been told that my number was the number to call. I had to look up King's correct number for her and told her to ask for the body shop. At least they were communicating, I thought.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tales from the Lost Months: Jury Duty Ice Road Trucking/Subaruing Blues (PART 3)
While waiting for the wife, I got out of my car to go survey the damage. I had to walk down to Mr. Costello’s driveway and back along it to get a view of the passenger side of the car. It did indeed appear that I had struck the large rock there with the front right corner of the vehicle that would explain the sudden stop on a dime it had done, which hitting only the bush would not have. One of the body panels in the front had popped loose and there was some definite cratering of the bumper, but the headlight was not smashed. I had no idea what the internal damage might be, but the car was still running just fine and no warning lights had popped up. Could it be only cosmetic? They do make Subarus pretty stout, and all.I didn’t fully appreciate it until later, but it was probably a good thing I went off the road at the particular spot I had. While the rest of the right side of the road along the blind curve was dotted with varying sized rocks and shrubs, there were places where I could have gone between them and possibly off the edge of the road, over the embankment into Mr. Costello's driveway. Potentially, this might have rolled the car. Given enough momentum sent me over the far edge of his driveway and down the rest of his very steep front yard into the trees far below. Or, if I’d gone off further down the road, near the mouth of his driveway, I might have continued over the edge of the same hill there, crashing through trees on my way down toward the stream bed. For all intents, I’d crashed perfectly.
I knocked on Mr. Costello’s door to let him know I was lodged in his shrubbery. He wasn’t home at that moment, but drove up a few minutes later, about the same time the wife arrived on foot. He'd been out driving his own wife to work.
“Sorry about your irises," the wife said.
Mr. Costello was pretty jovial about the whole thing. He was just glad I was all right and that we’d let him know about the crash, as an earlier neighbor had slid down the hill and taken out his mailbox. They'd not left so much as a note about it, either. He told us not to worry about the plants, or the spruce, or the rock, because he and his wife had been planning on tearing it all out to put in new railroad tie supports at the base of the embankment next summer and we’d just got a head start on the demo for the job.With Mr. Costello’s help, we pulled all the smaller rocks from beneath my car and then made a couple of attempts at getting the Subaru unstuck from the spruce and back on the road. All such efforts, however, resulted in the car sliding further down the embankment, so we decided to leave it for the tow truck.
There on the spot, I phoned my insurance company. I don’t want to say their name here, so as not to sully their otherwise stellar standing in my opinion, but it’s the same Texas-based insurance company to which patron and loon Barbara Turdmurkle once drove me nigh unto insanity in her attempt to have me fax them something, during my days at the "liberry." Normally, the company is a delight to deal with on all levels, and I stand by that. However, for some reason the rep I spoke to that morning was less than the usual picture of efficiency. Perhaps she was simply not functioning with a full cup of coffee. Or maybe it was because they knew they would soon have to pay for something, rather than just letting me shovel money in their direction.
Naturally, there were 500 questions in the claims process. I understand this, but wish I'd had the forethought to wait until I was back in my warm home to answer them, rather than in the 10 degree driveway. Some questions were straightforward, such as “How fast were you going?” (Answer: “Well, I’d say probably 5 to 8 mph when I started down the hill, then much faster after I started sliding.”) However, the lady I spoke with, being a Texan, couldn't seem to wrap her mind around a key concept in the road-construction philosophy often used here in the Mountain State.
“Did the accident happen on a four lane road or two lane road?” she asked.
“It happened on a one lane road.”
“So, a one WAY road,” she said.
“No, a one LANE road,” I corrected.
“A one lane road?”
“Yes, a ONE. LANE. ROAD.” There followed a long pause, so I added, “Cars move in both directions, but I assure you it is a one lane road.”
“But... if cars move both directions, it’s a two lane road.”
I had to pause myself, then, and take a nice freezing breath of air before explaining an inherent truth about West Virginia: it’s a state geographically made of mountains, hills and hollers and the vast majority of the non-highway and non-city street back and side roads are basically one lane strips of asphalt which, if you’re lucky, will accommodate two vehicles passing one another due to the gravel shoulders on either side, provided the vehicles are moving slow enough.“Believe me,” I said, “no one’s flying down this road. The posted speed limit is 20 and I was only going about 5 until I started sliding.”
She still didn’t seem to believe me, but wisely let the matter go. Focus then turned to the fact that my policy does not come with rental car reimbursement, so I’d have to pay for that should I need one. Eventually the questions were all answered, she said they'd be in touch soon and she then put me through to roadside assist to arrange a tow truck to haul my car to the local Subaru dealership, hereafter to be known as King Subaru (not its real name).
The wife and I hoofed it back home so I could await the call from roadside assist and she could finish getting ready for shopping. She offered to hang around until after the tow came, in case I wanted to go with her, but I said I was done for the day and would likely just go back to bed and hope for better things on the morrow.
A bit later in the morning, the courthouse lady called back to tell me that I was being placed into Jury Group 2. She also reiterated how I was always welcome to phone them and bow out should weather or mere inconvenience present itself. However, group 2 would not be needed for service until the following Monday.
"Oh. I might have a car by then," I said.
I could not have been more wrong.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Actual Jury Duty: Day 1
I guess it had to happen sooner or later. Yes, indeed, 29 days since starting my two month term as a member of the local jury pool, today I finally set foot in the court house for the first time. My lack of service thus far does not seem to be due to the events from the ongoing Juice-Without-A-Car saga, as I had transportation during most of that period in one form or another. I suspect instead that weather and holiday delays were the major culprits.
Since the weather has been clear for about a week, though, and since the holidays were over, I was pretty sure there was no avoiding today's scheduled service. This morning, while eating breakfast, I fished out my wallet to call the courthouse line, as instructed, to make sure court was still on. It was, so I finished up my food, kicked the dogs and cats out of the house, and headed in.
I found parking near the courthouse and started across the street toward it when I realized I had forgotten the name of the judge whose court I was to report to in a few minutes. My memory for names is awful. When I worked in the "liberry" I prided myself on being able to mentally match names to faces for the majority of our patrons. Since leaving, my skills have rusted so much that I can usually only recall the first letter of most people's names. And, in fact, that's all I could come up with for the judge. Good thing I'd written it on the back of my jury hotline card, which was in my wallet, which was... unexpectedly not in my back pocket. I'd evidently left it on the breakfast table. Shit.
I tried to phone the wife, who was off today, but she didn't answer either number. I decided I'd deal with it later and hoped they didn't require proof of identity. I passed through the metal detectors, asked the guard at the door where the courtrooms were, and then climbed three flights of stairs to get there. I'd hoped the judge's name would be listed somewhere, but no such luck. I noted, though, that one courtroom was labeled "Criminal" and the other "Circuit," which was the branch I was to report to. Sure enough, peering through the round windows in the swinging doors, I saw a large room filled with a bunch of dismal looking souls all seated on one side.
"You hear for jury duty?" asked a lady who'd walked up to the door.
"Yeah. I can't remember the judge's name, though."
She offered the correct name with the correct first letter. We went in and had a seat on the back bench behind all the dismal souls.
Soon enough, the clerk whose voice I knew from the jury hotline arrived and called roll. Most of us were present. She asked if anyone had any excuses and then put all the cards with our names into a box, which she shook vigorously for a while. Not knowing the process, I wondered if we'd be chosen from some sort of raffle. That didn't seem like something I'd learned in my 22 years distant, high school course Intro to Law, but whatever.
After 20 minutes, lawyery types began to arrive, as did a couple of people I thought might be witnesses. Then a bailiff entered and told us to stand as judge whatshisnose entered. The judge said some things about the trial, but I couldn't understand a lot of it because one of the latecomers behind me chose that moment to start a coughing fit. Great.
The judge then asked if there were any motions to be heard before the trial began and one of the attorneys asked to approach. Both attorney's and a man I assume was the defendant approached. I couldn't make out much of what they were saying, not only because of the cougher, but also because they were speaking in hushed tones. The phrase "refuses to testify" did come up. After a couple of minutes, the attorneys backed off and the judge announced that matters in the case had been settled out of court and it appeared they would not be needing our services after all. He offered that this sort of thing occasionally happened, due to a variety of factors, several of which he listed, but seeming to place special emphasis on the final example of people not being able to make up their minds. He told us we were still an important part of the proceedings that day, that we still needed to call the hotline after 4:30 to find out when we would next be needed, and that we would receive full credit for being there. We were then excused.
You have never seen a happier group of people that the formerly dismal souls leaving the courtroom. Everyone was grinning.
I just called the hotline. Looks like they won't be needing me until sometime after the 11th. I'm still willing to serve, but, the way things have been going, I would not be surprised if I don't receive any real jury time at all.
Since the weather has been clear for about a week, though, and since the holidays were over, I was pretty sure there was no avoiding today's scheduled service. This morning, while eating breakfast, I fished out my wallet to call the courthouse line, as instructed, to make sure court was still on. It was, so I finished up my food, kicked the dogs and cats out of the house, and headed in.
I found parking near the courthouse and started across the street toward it when I realized I had forgotten the name of the judge whose court I was to report to in a few minutes. My memory for names is awful. When I worked in the "liberry" I prided myself on being able to mentally match names to faces for the majority of our patrons. Since leaving, my skills have rusted so much that I can usually only recall the first letter of most people's names. And, in fact, that's all I could come up with for the judge. Good thing I'd written it on the back of my jury hotline card, which was in my wallet, which was... unexpectedly not in my back pocket. I'd evidently left it on the breakfast table. Shit.
I tried to phone the wife, who was off today, but she didn't answer either number. I decided I'd deal with it later and hoped they didn't require proof of identity. I passed through the metal detectors, asked the guard at the door where the courtrooms were, and then climbed three flights of stairs to get there. I'd hoped the judge's name would be listed somewhere, but no such luck. I noted, though, that one courtroom was labeled "Criminal" and the other "Circuit," which was the branch I was to report to. Sure enough, peering through the round windows in the swinging doors, I saw a large room filled with a bunch of dismal looking souls all seated on one side.
"You hear for jury duty?" asked a lady who'd walked up to the door.
"Yeah. I can't remember the judge's name, though."
She offered the correct name with the correct first letter. We went in and had a seat on the back bench behind all the dismal souls.
Soon enough, the clerk whose voice I knew from the jury hotline arrived and called roll. Most of us were present. She asked if anyone had any excuses and then put all the cards with our names into a box, which she shook vigorously for a while. Not knowing the process, I wondered if we'd be chosen from some sort of raffle. That didn't seem like something I'd learned in my 22 years distant, high school course Intro to Law, but whatever.
After 20 minutes, lawyery types began to arrive, as did a couple of people I thought might be witnesses. Then a bailiff entered and told us to stand as judge whatshisnose entered. The judge said some things about the trial, but I couldn't understand a lot of it because one of the latecomers behind me chose that moment to start a coughing fit. Great.
The judge then asked if there were any motions to be heard before the trial began and one of the attorneys asked to approach. Both attorney's and a man I assume was the defendant approached. I couldn't make out much of what they were saying, not only because of the cougher, but also because they were speaking in hushed tones. The phrase "refuses to testify" did come up. After a couple of minutes, the attorneys backed off and the judge announced that matters in the case had been settled out of court and it appeared they would not be needing our services after all. He offered that this sort of thing occasionally happened, due to a variety of factors, several of which he listed, but seeming to place special emphasis on the final example of people not being able to make up their minds. He told us we were still an important part of the proceedings that day, that we still needed to call the hotline after 4:30 to find out when we would next be needed, and that we would receive full credit for being there. We were then excused.
You have never seen a happier group of people that the formerly dismal souls leaving the courtroom. Everyone was grinning.
I just called the hotline. Looks like they won't be needing me until sometime after the 11th. I'm still willing to serve, but, the way things have been going, I would not be surprised if I don't receive any real jury time at all.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Tales from the Lost Months: Jury Duty Ice Road Trucking/Subaruing Blues (PART 2)
On more than one occasion, I’ve received advice from neighbors and friends as to the best method for traversing icy, hilly roads, specifically in our neighborhood. Mostly they advise sticking to graveled areas, which is wise enough. More than one, however, has advised that if your tires start to slide, put the car in a low gear and simply coast on down to the bottom of the hill, allowing the car’s lower gear to keep your slide a gradual one. These people, in my estimation, are EFFing crazy.
As I started down the hill I was already in the lowest gear the car could manage and going probably 5 mph. Once the tires began to slip, I first began pumping the brakes to no avail. Then, remembering the above advice from the above multiple neighbors and friends, I just tried my best to aim for the center of the road and slide gradually and safely down it. This might have even worked, except that our road curves to the left. So as I turned the wheel to try and meet that curve, I found that no such directional change was being accepted by the road and I was sent skidding off the right side of the road and into the landscaping of our neighbor, Mr. Costello. His home is located in the hillside below the blind curve, with his driveway beginning where the incline of the blind curve begins. Further down the hill from Mr. Costello's driveway is his very steep and long yard of an angle and distance which you really wouldn't want to go sliding down under any set of circumstances. Perhaps fortunately for me, though, there is a steep embankment between the blind curve road and his driveway and house, which Mr. Cos has landscaped with plants and large rocks to help prevent people from sliding off the hill into his garage. My car went off the road into the landscaping closer to the mouth of his driveway, near the lower part of the curve's incline. The car rolled across probably 10 or 12 rocks of 5 to 8 inches in diameter each, a number of snow-coated plants and then ended its journey by smashing into a large spruce bush which masked the presence of a very large boulder of probably three feet in diameter.
The car, as you might expect, came to an abrupt halt when it met the rock. My glasses were flung from my face, but the impact failed to deploy any airbags. The string of curses that had been pouring from my mouth all the way down the hill intensified and then peaked in that moment. I managed to put the car in park and find my glasses. It was at that point that I was able to look through the windshield and saw Mrs. Hazard, the neighbor I’d been trying to avoid running over, safely standing just beyond Mr. Costello's driveway, staring back at me with concern.
I rolled down the window and in a bright, cheerful and probably unhinged tone, called out “Good morning!”
“Are you all right?” she called.
Nothing felt hurt, beyond a sprain in my pride. “Yeah.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll call my wife and then insurance.”
Mrs. Hazard said that if I turned out to need help to just honk and she’d come running back. Then she returned to her walk out and was soon around the level curve of that section of road.
Amazingly, my cell phone had bars. (We're within sight of two cell towers and get the worst reception from our house.) I phoned the wife.
"Hey, I crashed the car," I said. I gave her the short version of it and told her where I was lodged. She said she’d be down as soon as she could. Fortunately, she meant by foot, which was a relief because I’d had visions of her car sliding into mine--or other cars, for that matter. Fortunately, I was pretty much off the road and out of the way, but that wouldn't help if someone came down and slid like I had.
Next up I called the court house to let them know that I would be, at the very least, late to jury duty, due to having driven into a rock. The lady asked if I was all right first, then said not to worry about it and someone would call me later to do my orientation over the phone. She then added that in the future, if the weather was bad, or if I was sick, or if it was just “inconvenient” for me to come to court, I could just phone them up and be instantly excused.
“THEN WHY THE HELL DID YOUR EFFING LETTER THREATEN TO SICK THE SHERIFF ON ME IF I DIDN’T SHOW UP?!” I screamed silently in my head.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
As I started down the hill I was already in the lowest gear the car could manage and going probably 5 mph. Once the tires began to slip, I first began pumping the brakes to no avail. Then, remembering the above advice from the above multiple neighbors and friends, I just tried my best to aim for the center of the road and slide gradually and safely down it. This might have even worked, except that our road curves to the left. So as I turned the wheel to try and meet that curve, I found that no such directional change was being accepted by the road and I was sent skidding off the right side of the road and into the landscaping of our neighbor, Mr. Costello. His home is located in the hillside below the blind curve, with his driveway beginning where the incline of the blind curve begins. Further down the hill from Mr. Costello's driveway is his very steep and long yard of an angle and distance which you really wouldn't want to go sliding down under any set of circumstances. Perhaps fortunately for me, though, there is a steep embankment between the blind curve road and his driveway and house, which Mr. Cos has landscaped with plants and large rocks to help prevent people from sliding off the hill into his garage. My car went off the road into the landscaping closer to the mouth of his driveway, near the lower part of the curve's incline. The car rolled across probably 10 or 12 rocks of 5 to 8 inches in diameter each, a number of snow-coated plants and then ended its journey by smashing into a large spruce bush which masked the presence of a very large boulder of probably three feet in diameter.
The car, as you might expect, came to an abrupt halt when it met the rock. My glasses were flung from my face, but the impact failed to deploy any airbags. The string of curses that had been pouring from my mouth all the way down the hill intensified and then peaked in that moment. I managed to put the car in park and find my glasses. It was at that point that I was able to look through the windshield and saw Mrs. Hazard, the neighbor I’d been trying to avoid running over, safely standing just beyond Mr. Costello's driveway, staring back at me with concern.
I rolled down the window and in a bright, cheerful and probably unhinged tone, called out “Good morning!”
“Are you all right?” she called.
Nothing felt hurt, beyond a sprain in my pride. “Yeah.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll call my wife and then insurance.”
Mrs. Hazard said that if I turned out to need help to just honk and she’d come running back. Then she returned to her walk out and was soon around the level curve of that section of road.
Amazingly, my cell phone had bars. (We're within sight of two cell towers and get the worst reception from our house.) I phoned the wife.
"Hey, I crashed the car," I said. I gave her the short version of it and told her where I was lodged. She said she’d be down as soon as she could. Fortunately, she meant by foot, which was a relief because I’d had visions of her car sliding into mine--or other cars, for that matter. Fortunately, I was pretty much off the road and out of the way, but that wouldn't help if someone came down and slid like I had.
Next up I called the court house to let them know that I would be, at the very least, late to jury duty, due to having driven into a rock. The lady asked if I was all right first, then said not to worry about it and someone would call me later to do my orientation over the phone. She then added that in the future, if the weather was bad, or if I was sick, or if it was just “inconvenient” for me to come to court, I could just phone them up and be instantly excused.
“THEN WHY THE HELL DID YOUR EFFING LETTER THREATEN TO SICK THE SHERIFF ON ME IF I DIDN’T SHOW UP?!” I screamed silently in my head.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Tales from the Lost Months: Jury Duty Ice Road Trucking/Subaruing Blues (PART 1)
Okay. Day one of the new year, so let’s start the blogging off proper with a Tales from the Lost Months episode featuring the story of my most recent unfortunate adventure: jury duty.
I'm happy to report that my experience with the jury duty process of jury duty has been extremely tame. In fact, in the 25 days I've officially been a part of the local jury pool I've not set foot in the courthouse once. This is because while I have no problems with actually serving on a jury, I managed to accidentally find out a surefire way to stay off of one, which is to drive one’s car into a very large rock on the way to serve.
Lemme back up.
I was summoned for jury duty a couple months back, with my jury term to begin December 6. I know jury duty is traditionally unpopular, but serving doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’ve never served before and think it would be an interesting experience not to mention my civic and legal duty. I emphasize legal duty because the letter of summons I received did too, and made it pretty clear that my ass was to be in that courtroom on December the 6th or the sheriff was coming after me. In fact, the letter of summons strongly implied that should I even contemplate asking to be excused, no excuse under the sun would be acceptable up to and possibly including death itself (up to the judge’s discretion), unless I was over the age of 70 years or had a permanent disability or impairment, at which point serving would merely be optional. I didn’t see the need for such threatening language, but again I was more than willing to serve.
The weekend of December 4 and 5 was an icy one here in Borderland. We had snow on the ground, though not a tremendous amount. On the morning of Dec 6, however, I awoke to a nice thin blanket of the stuff, amounting to an inch or two on the roads and a bit deeper in the grass. This concerned me. Since moving to the mountain state in 2001, I’ve seen and driven in a lot of snow and am pretty comfortable with it. However, it takes me a couple of days to really get my snow legs back under me each year, driving wise. And I prefer to regain them on nice, level, snow and/or ice-covered pavement and not the hilly, steep, blind-curve-laden, rarely plowed roads of our neighborhood. However, after our ice-adventure-filled winter last year, I'd purchased a Subaru, which was, I had been assured, the vehicle of choice when traversing icy roads. On paper, I knew I should be fine to drive them, rusty snow skills or not.
The wife had a day off on this particular Monday, so she had some Christmas shopping planned and was eager to get an early start on it. She offered to give me a lift to the courthouse on her way to the mall, in case I didn't want to drive in the snow. My inner-wuss really wanted to accept the offer, but, being a big strong man, I told her it wouldn't be necessary.
Before I left, I called the court house to make sure they were still having court, secretly hoping they wouldn't. They were, though. Guess I had to go.
At 8:30 I went out to the car, giving myself plenty of time to make it to the courthouse no matter how slow I had to go. As I backed out of the garage, I noticed that one of my next door neighbors, Mrs. Hazard, was walking on the road below our drive in the process of walking out. Walking Out is the term we use around here for people who are unable to even get into the neighborhood because of the initial big icy hill found there, or who are rightfully afraid to risk the attempt of driving in and opt instead to park along the road immediately outside our neighborhood. They then hoof it in to their house (sometimes a considerable distance, depending how deep in they live) and then walk back out when they wish to leave. I’m embarrassed to say that it did not even occur to me to drive down and offer Mrs. Hazard a ride out. I was far too nervous about my own journey and my instinct was to give her a good couple of minutes to walk down the steep blind curve just below our section of the neighborhood. I didn’t want to risk sliding into her accidentally should my car start to slip on my way down the road.
After waiting, slowly drove down our long driveway, which is probably the steepest of the inclines we have to cover during any given trip. Sure enough, 2/3 of the way down, the tires started to slip and not even the Subaru’s all wheel drive could save me from sliding all the way to the bottom. I pumped the brakes the whole way down to no avail, failed to make the turn onto the road at the bottom and slid across and off the other side before stopping. Fortunately, it’s fairly level there, so I was able to drive back onto the road with no problem. But my nerves were already shot. Why the HELL hadn’t I taken the wife’s offer?!!
I then crept along to the top of the blind curve. I admit I was worried. I'd had very little ice driving practice in the Subaru before, since by the time I bought it last year the snow season was mostly over. It is only my terror, though, that I can use as an excuse for failing to do two obvious and important things. A) I should have driven with my right two tires off the edge of the road where there was some gravel in the shoulder. And B) I should have first pulled over to the side and got out to scout the hill itself to make sure someone had shoveled out some of the extra gravel the neighborhood purchases and keep in convenient piles next to the steep sections of the road. See, we're not a county road so we have no regular plow service. So we do what we can with the gravel and you’d be amazed at how much traction it can provide. What I quickly learned to my horror, though, was that no one had graveled the road that morning. And the way I learned this was by ever-so-slowly crept forward until I was pointed down the center of the one-lane road, whereupon, half-way down, all four tires lost any hope of traction and I began to slide very quickly in an unfortunate direction.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
I'm happy to report that my experience with the jury duty process of jury duty has been extremely tame. In fact, in the 25 days I've officially been a part of the local jury pool I've not set foot in the courthouse once. This is because while I have no problems with actually serving on a jury, I managed to accidentally find out a surefire way to stay off of one, which is to drive one’s car into a very large rock on the way to serve.
Lemme back up.
I was summoned for jury duty a couple months back, with my jury term to begin December 6. I know jury duty is traditionally unpopular, but serving doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’ve never served before and think it would be an interesting experience not to mention my civic and legal duty. I emphasize legal duty because the letter of summons I received did too, and made it pretty clear that my ass was to be in that courtroom on December the 6th or the sheriff was coming after me. In fact, the letter of summons strongly implied that should I even contemplate asking to be excused, no excuse under the sun would be acceptable up to and possibly including death itself (up to the judge’s discretion), unless I was over the age of 70 years or had a permanent disability or impairment, at which point serving would merely be optional. I didn’t see the need for such threatening language, but again I was more than willing to serve.
The weekend of December 4 and 5 was an icy one here in Borderland. We had snow on the ground, though not a tremendous amount. On the morning of Dec 6, however, I awoke to a nice thin blanket of the stuff, amounting to an inch or two on the roads and a bit deeper in the grass. This concerned me. Since moving to the mountain state in 2001, I’ve seen and driven in a lot of snow and am pretty comfortable with it. However, it takes me a couple of days to really get my snow legs back under me each year, driving wise. And I prefer to regain them on nice, level, snow and/or ice-covered pavement and not the hilly, steep, blind-curve-laden, rarely plowed roads of our neighborhood. However, after our ice-adventure-filled winter last year, I'd purchased a Subaru, which was, I had been assured, the vehicle of choice when traversing icy roads. On paper, I knew I should be fine to drive them, rusty snow skills or not.
The wife had a day off on this particular Monday, so she had some Christmas shopping planned and was eager to get an early start on it. She offered to give me a lift to the courthouse on her way to the mall, in case I didn't want to drive in the snow. My inner-wuss really wanted to accept the offer, but, being a big strong man, I told her it wouldn't be necessary.
Before I left, I called the court house to make sure they were still having court, secretly hoping they wouldn't. They were, though. Guess I had to go.
At 8:30 I went out to the car, giving myself plenty of time to make it to the courthouse no matter how slow I had to go. As I backed out of the garage, I noticed that one of my next door neighbors, Mrs. Hazard, was walking on the road below our drive in the process of walking out. Walking Out is the term we use around here for people who are unable to even get into the neighborhood because of the initial big icy hill found there, or who are rightfully afraid to risk the attempt of driving in and opt instead to park along the road immediately outside our neighborhood. They then hoof it in to their house (sometimes a considerable distance, depending how deep in they live) and then walk back out when they wish to leave. I’m embarrassed to say that it did not even occur to me to drive down and offer Mrs. Hazard a ride out. I was far too nervous about my own journey and my instinct was to give her a good couple of minutes to walk down the steep blind curve just below our section of the neighborhood. I didn’t want to risk sliding into her accidentally should my car start to slip on my way down the road.
After waiting, slowly drove down our long driveway, which is probably the steepest of the inclines we have to cover during any given trip. Sure enough, 2/3 of the way down, the tires started to slip and not even the Subaru’s all wheel drive could save me from sliding all the way to the bottom. I pumped the brakes the whole way down to no avail, failed to make the turn onto the road at the bottom and slid across and off the other side before stopping. Fortunately, it’s fairly level there, so I was able to drive back onto the road with no problem. But my nerves were already shot. Why the HELL hadn’t I taken the wife’s offer?!!
I then crept along to the top of the blind curve. I admit I was worried. I'd had very little ice driving practice in the Subaru before, since by the time I bought it last year the snow season was mostly over. It is only my terror, though, that I can use as an excuse for failing to do two obvious and important things. A) I should have driven with my right two tires off the edge of the road where there was some gravel in the shoulder. And B) I should have first pulled over to the side and got out to scout the hill itself to make sure someone had shoveled out some of the extra gravel the neighborhood purchases and keep in convenient piles next to the steep sections of the road. See, we're not a county road so we have no regular plow service. So we do what we can with the gravel and you’d be amazed at how much traction it can provide. What I quickly learned to my horror, though, was that no one had graveled the road that morning. And the way I learned this was by ever-so-slowly crept forward until I was pointed down the center of the one-lane road, whereupon, half-way down, all four tires lost any hope of traction and I began to slide very quickly in an unfortunate direction.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
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