You Want Me To Do What?

I am a decent driver. I still don’t like to drive, but I’m decent at it. I can back up my car, and I can even parallel park when I have to. I do a good three point turn in my drive way so that I can drive out facing the street. Last night, I was even able to drive up on a curb to avoid the guy that went into oncoming traffic (that would be into my lane) because obviously he was tired of waiting in a long line of cars. See? I’m decent at driving.

However, there are certain things that I will not do.

I used to take my car to one of those oil change places where there is a crew in a pit in the basement of the business. You drive your car over a hole in the floor, and the crew below is able to drain your oil without putting the car up on a lift. I refused to drive it in over that pit. I would get out of my car, and trust one of the kids at the facility to drive my car over the hole. Hey, if my car is going down, I’m not going down with it.

Some BP gas stations have a good car wash. The one by my house that I go to, you get your code when you pay for the car wash, drive up to the door, enter the code and the bay door opens. You drive in until a red light in front of you says stop. From there, put your car in park, let the machine do its thing and when the red light turns green, I drive out the other end with a cleaner car than I drove in with. It’s not perfect but it’s better than doing it by hand. It’s so simple even I can do it.

Due to the weather at home last weekend, my car has been filthy with the salt from the road. Every time I get in or out of the car wearing dark pants, I get that salt residue on the back of my pants. One of the things that I wanted to do over the weekend was to get my car washed. Unfortunately, that cycle of nap/watch TV/nap/watch TV took over my body on Sunday and I accomplished nothing. So, I drove down here in a filthy car, continuing to get my pants dirty every time I get in and out of the car.

There is a BP station right down the street from where I am working. I figured that after work, I’d gas up and get a car wash on the way to the hotel. That sounds easy, right? At first it was. I gassed up, chose the car wash I wanted right from the pump, received my access code and drove over to the gate. I punched in my code and then that’s when I saw it. There in front of me to the left was a track that is supposed to grab your wheel and pull you through the damn car wash. Who of you that can read this really believes that “I” can do this?

They have a nice round mirror outside pointed at the entrance to the track that your tire is to drive into. Unfortunately, my side view mirror is pretty much obstructing the entire mirror. I tried as hard as I could, but with it being dark outside and the placement of my mirror, I couldn’t see a damn thing.

When the left front side of my car actually started to go up into the air, I figured I just missed that channel and was driving up onto the edge of it. Ok, I can fix that. I backed up until I was level, moved what I thought was just a little bit over to the left, and then I heard the SCCCRRRAAAAAPPPPPPEEEEEE. Hmm. That can’t be good. In hindsight this morning, I should have gotten out of my car and looked for myself just where I was in relation to where I needed to be. Nah. That would be the easy way out. I jiggled the wheel until I could feel it inside of the track and that awful scraping sound quit. Then, I put the shift in neutral and was pulled through the carwash all the while wondering what the heck my wheel would look like when I got through to the other side.

At the end, you finally come to a red light that tells you not to move as you finish up with their version of a blow dryer. When the green light finally came on, I pulled up and out of the way of the doors and machinery and got out to look at my wheel. Again, it was dark outside, so I really couldn’t see any problems. I had a tire and a hubcap. It looked good to me.

In the light of day this morning, I do see that the hubcap is bent a little, with a nice scrape around about half of it. At least I had the good sense God gave a slug to stop as soon as I could when I heard the scrape and not let the car go all the way through that way.

C’mon BP! Let’s try a bigger mirror! Or maybe a little light there so I could see better. Or please at least have some kid directing me from outside “a little to the left, a little to the right”. Don’t make me do this on my own! Oh well. That’s the last time I go to that BP station for a car wash. They really should warn people that morons should not use this equipment.