We got the guy to pull over and we passed papers. At first, the only damage I could see was a three inch dent on the front top of the hood right on a "soft" body line. I won't bore you with all the details but I will say we learned a good lesson and thankfully no one got hurt. We figured because it was clear the thing came off his trailer. We didn't bother to call a cop! From now on we WILL ALWAYS CALL A COP if we have an accident! The kid driving was the brother of the owner of the company. We leave the scene and go to Corpus Christi Church as we planned. When we get to the church we were early so Pat called our insurance company to do some follow-up. In the mean time I go out to take a better look at things. I just barely saw a series of scratches at the top of the headlight lens. They ran roughly 1" vertical and just about 6" in width. OK, I figure they can be buffed out... then I see it. There was a broken piece of the interior of the headlight assembly laying on the bottom of the assembly. Oh man! Headlamp assemblies can run between three to four (or more) hundred dollars to replace them. I call the number I was given by the driver at the scene and leave a message. I got a call back about eight minutes later. The owner returned my call. He goes bonkers because he hadn't heard about the accident and the first thing he asked me was where's the accident report. Right off the bat he thinks I'm going after something already broken and want him to pay for it! After I left the message, he called his brother to find out what's going on. So now this guy is rippin' because he heard about the accident from me not his brother. He called his brother before he called me back and his brother tells him the only damage everyone saw was a tiny dent on the hood! So now the guy is only willing to cover the dent and he tells me he's not responsible for the headlight because there was NO report by the police, etc.
It took almost two weeks to iron this out and we had it all planned. I repeatedly asked him how he wants to settle this. We had a good case and our insurance company was ready to take this guy on. After several contentious phone calls, I simply said I'm not going to argue, we're just going to let our insurance company deal with your insurance. That rang a bell for the guy. He asked to give him the day and he'd get back to us. Later that day I got a call from a professional sounding young lady who said she is an elementary school teacher and works for this landscaping company taking care of his books, etc. We had a very cordial discussion and I gave her every detail I could. She said they will discuss all this and get back to us the next day. She called as she said she would and said they will be paying for the repairs. Personally, I think this guy would have paid through the nose if we went through our insurance company. The repairs cost over $836.00. We made sure the repair shop had the amount to cover the repairs prior to bringing in the car.
The dent is very difficult to see. Here's a photo of the left headlight assembly. You can just barely see the scratches at the top middle of the clear lens. At the inside bottom of the light (the black area) you can see the broken piece. If the lens had cracked it would have easily been seen. Even the Techs working on the car saw the replacement headlamp assembly and wondered why it was being replaced. Their adjuster let them try to find out why it was being replaced. Even they couldn't see how the light was broken!
I'm happy to report we got our RAV4 back from the repair shop today. You can bet we'll be staying clear of trucks towing open trailers and big rigs from now on! And, the first thing we'll do if we have an accident is call the police!
Ok, dealt with that issue... then just last week I was working on the laptop cutting and pasting stuff and suddenly the screen froze and I hear this tick, tick, tick, tick from the laptop. Ah, what was that???? I restart the laptop, the screen goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the top left of the screen. The hard drive crashed! It was gone! That's it! Kaput! Zip, Nada! I thought, OMG, what about all our files and photos OH NO! You may recall our trip north recently? While using our laptop at Bill and Angela's I noticed the laptop fan was blowing air that seemed hotter than usual. I began thinking I don't recall air coming out of the vent fans that warm. My mind began to think seriously about the external hard drive I'd like to buy for backing up our files, etc. While in New Hampshire I asked Pat about buying the 4TB back up drive I had been thinking about a few months ago. There's no Sales Tax in NH so that might be worth our while to get it there, we did! Once we got to Bill and Angela's I tried it out and it just didn't seem like it was working like it should. I managed to back up my Documents and then my photos but it just didn't seem to be working for a full backup. What the heck, I'll do that when we get home. Once home I tried to back up all our stuff. I let it work and eventually I noticed that indeed it was actually working. Great! A week later our laptop died!
Moral of the story is back up your PC/MAC as often as you can! It took me several days to see that I did save all our files/photos and get the new laptop up and running. To top it all off, a few of the files and even our old printer didn't work on the new system (Windows 10). Ugh! Out we went for a new printer!
I guess we're kinda tired! Tired of spending money!
At least Pat got to paint the entry way hutch that she's been wanting to paint!
Great job, huh!
The photo below is a front that was moving east to west over our house at sunset!
You didn't think I gave up on Flippers did you! The Flippers wait staff are getting to know us by name.
OK Campers, where's the Hidden Mickey?
Will this view help?
