Looks like the Oddball Posting Challenge for July 2004 has fallen flat on its face—there will not be “a post a day” as I had hoped. However, the failure is not without extenuating circumstances. This Friday night, on the way home from work, my wife was involved in a car accident right outside the entrance to our community. Thankfully, she was not hurt! (Neither was anyone else involved.) While making a left turn into our community, her car was T-boned by an oncoming sedan, spinning her around 180 degrees and rendering both cars severely damaged. Naturally, I’ve had a little too much on my mind to think about this website in the last few days.

I spent the first part of the weekend making phone calls, assembling plans and getting everything squared away—or as squared away as it can get on the weekend, when nobody’s open for business, not even the records office at the police station, believe that or not. On Saturday I went over to the yard to which the car was towed after the accident and took some photos through the fence. And when Monday morning rolls around, I’ll be getting an early start.

All the offices I need to call open up at the same time—8:00 a.m.—so it’s going to be a sudden race to get things done. I’m going to start by heading over to the yard where my wife’s car was towed. When I get there I’ll take a slew of photos of the car from various angles and sign a release for the vehicle, so the tow yard can hand it over to Eagle Automotive, the body shop that my insurance company has allied with to do the repairs. That, of course, assumes the car won’t be totaled. Looking at the damage, I don’t see why it would be. But I won’t know for certain until sometime Monday afternoon before 4:00, when the insurance adjustor will be calling me.

After taking care of things at the yard, I’m going to call Eagle Automotive and tell them that the car’s been signed over to them and they need to come and get it. I’ll also remind them that they need to bring a flatbed tow truck because this car cannot be pulled along behind with its rear wheels on the ground, due to the fact that the right rear suspension has been destroyed.

Then, I’ll call the insurance company and remind them—even though I told them already—that this is a leased car and while it’s in my name, the actual owner of the vehicle is the leassor, GMAC. They should be acutely aware of that already but I don’t want anybody forgetting.

Finally, I need to call the sheriff’s office and see when I can pick up a copy of the police report from the accident. Hopefully I don’t find any surprises in there. The cop who was on the scene was about the most detached, disinterested officer I’ve ever encountered, so if anything the report will probably be pretty sparse. I can deal with all the car repair and insurance stuff, but finding fabricated facts or strange assertions in a police report would not make my day.

After that I’ll go to work and anxiously await a call from the claims adjustor. Making any further speculation or preparations would be foolish, since I need them to decide whether they’re even going to fix it. If they are, then I’m arguably in for more work than if they decide to total it. Because then I’ve got to hound the body shop for information, make sure I get a complete parts list, find out what type of parts these are and and whether they’re GM/OEM or aftermarket repros. I need to fight to get the best parts and repairs I can get for the insurance company’s money, because this is a lease vehicle and if I decide to turn it back in next year, I don’t want GMAC penalizing me big time for having had shoddy repair work done.

If the insurance company totals the car, we’ll obviously have to replace it. The first order of business would be securing enough money from them to pay off the lease, which could be the biggest headache of the whole ordeal—or easy, depending on whether they want to play hardball. Then we’d have to replace the car, I’m thinking with something like a Mazda3 or maybe another Vibe (GM’s got some great incentives going right now).

So, it’s been an interesting weekend, but we’ll get through it. The important thing is that no one was hurt, which is a blessing. And as my grandmother says, the rest is “just a car.”

More news on this as it develops.