Car trouble and long walks

Last week I had to drop off our van at the shop for some maintenance work. Because the shop is close to Dan's work, I took his car (the Infiniti) home. Five minutes later, as I was stopped in the freeway off-ramp waiting to turn right, an Expedition slammed into the back of the car. No one was hurt, thank goodness. It was pretty shocking, as car accidents always are. The good news: The other person was clearly at fault, they had insurance, and their insurance accepted full responsibility.

Now for the bad news. After the car was towed to a body work shop, I stopped by to sign some paperwork. As I walked in and gave my name, the people in the office said, "OH, Mrs. Porter, you need to see this for yourself." Never a good sign. The head mechanic took me back to the car and proceeded to show me all the evidences that our car had been in a previous, very bad accident. Probably should have had a salvage title. Except we bought it used four years ago from Tim Dahle Nissan in Utah, and they had showed us evidence that it had NEVER been in an accident. The mechanic said that there is no way that Tim Dahle's mechanics wouldn't have been able to spot the evidence of the previous repairs (which were done very poorly), so they had likely not been honest with us.

The real implication is that, because the previous repairs were shoddily completed, and the accident was roughly in the same spot, much more damage occurred in the accident than the insurance is wanting to pay for. And, also because the work was done poorly, there is a significant amount of rust on the underside of the car. Lovely.

We were planning to sell Dan's Infiniti next year, when Brandon goes to college. We will be back to a two car family for a few years (and a much cheaper insurance bill!) Now, we are not sure what to do. We are waiting to hear the final disposition, and then we have some hard decisions to make.

In other news, Dan just left for the "Portland to Coast" walk. A team from his work is doing the event. He will walk two legs of the race, the first 7 miles, all uphill, and the second 4 miles, flat. He is really nervous about doing the walk rather than a run. He runs all the time and I fast walk all the time. Neither of us likes the other's preferred exercise. He says that he refuses to swing his hips or arms to walk fast. I told him that he won't be very effective at walking fast, then. They couldn't get enough people from his work for a running team, so they are walking. I told him to think like a pioneer. He has plenty of ancestors who walked and walked and walked, and didn't even have fancy running anti-blister socks or ipods to listen to or bottled water to drink . . .