Above and beyond

I was in an unfamiliar parking lot yesterday, pulled into a parking space too far, scraped the underside of the front end of my car, and bumped the curb. No worries, it's an old car, and I wasn't concerned that there would be any damage. I went on my merry way.

Fast forward to me leaving work at the end of the day. Is that a scraping noise now, from the front of the car? Hmm. The road leading to my building has a low speed limit, so I'm listening to it as I'm driving out. Not good. I stop and look under the car (which my mechanic would be proud of - at least I checked!). Nothing. I drive on, stop again and look again because it's getting louder. Still nothing.

My mechanic has had Graycie the camper van for about a month now, waiting for a part to come in, so I can't just switch cars and deal with this later :-). I call him, and he proceeds to DROP EVERYTHING, including working on the car of a couple whose old VW rabbit is overheating and they want to go out of town.

We drive it, he hears the sound, which by now has diminished, but is still there. He takes off the front tire, causing a bunch of rusty stuff that he said wasn't a safety issue to fall out, puts the tire back on, and we drive it again. Apparently I jarred some stuff loose in the parking lot, and it got stuck in a place where it made the noise. Meanwhile, he's talking about the weight he's lost, his wonderful daughters and his recent bout of gout. Such a great talker - I admire people who can converse so comfortably (but not yak on and on).

All in all, it was about 45 minutes of his time. He didn't charge me. I need to do something. I think a batch of my homemade brownies is in order. It seems inadequate, but he wouldn't charge me.

We also discussed the possibility of them putting Graycie on consignment. We'll talk more about it when I pick her up next week, but I think that's the way to go. It's worth 5-10% or so of the asking price to do it that way, IMO.