Well, You Know, Race Cars Don't Need Headlights, Because the Track is Always Lit

At the very beginning of my pregnancy I was in a car accident. A few days later I was driving at night and having a very hard time seeing the road; it was difficult to see the lines, where the road curved, etc. I blamed this new "night blindness" on the pregnancy and tried not to drive at night. Of course, there were times when it was unavoidable, like when I drove Rissy to the airport and scared her half to death in the process. But, for the most part, I just didn't drive at night for two months. A few days after the airport fiasco, Drek drove at night for the first time since the car accident, while I was a content passenger. After a while of driving Drek announced that he didn't think the problem was me, he thought the problem was the headlights. He did some experiments and found that one headlight was dim and pointing upward. This was the problem, caused by the accident. My eyes were fine.

We replaced the headlight bulb, solving the dimness problem, but it still pointed upwards. We postponed getting fixed and just avoided driving at night.

Alas, we could postpone no further. Drek and I are going on a very long car trip soon and I want Jasmine to be ready. I stopped by an auto body shop, ordered the part and scheduled an appointment.

So, Friday morning I took Jasmine to get her headlight fixed. The appointment took two hours. I wandered across the street to a yummy Indian restaurant, read my book and waited. Afterward I took Jasmine to a different car place to get her oil changed. I waited thirty minutes while that was done. Finally, I took Jasmine to a a glass-car place to get a rock-chip repaired. That took ten minutes.

Two hours and forty minutes. That is a long time to sit around waiting for your car to be done. When I finally returned home to brag about my day and how Jasmine was now road-trip worthy, (headlights facing down, illuminating the road, oil changed and working great, windshield in-tact) Drek simply asked: "Did you get the tires changed? We need those snow tires taken off and new tires installed before the trip." Sigh.

A brief history: I bought Jasmine in September. Not long after I had snow tires put on to help with the winter weather. I just never got around to taking the snow tires off (what can I say? If she was an electric car I might be more interested in her workings. As it is, I am lazy. As long as she's running, great). In January (two years and some months later) I got new snow tires since the old ones were wearing out.

On Saturday I finally had regular tires put on to replace the snow tires (thirty more minutes of waiting). I can't believe the difference. It's like I'm driving a new car. I can turn on a dime and I fly. I was going eighty before I realized I was speeding. Usually I can't get above seventy-five. And I get better gas mileage too!

These not-snow tires are amazing things. Now Jasmine is ready for our road-trip.