Tuesday, October 13, 2009

We had our first big rain this week in SF. Afterwards, no matter who you talked to, you would be guaranteed to hear them say one of two things.

Either: "Wow! How about that rain! Did you manage to stay dry?"

Or: "Wow! How about all the whiners in this town? Did you hear everyone complaining about the water falling from the sky?"

That was pretty much it. I had those 2 conversations about a dozen times. I guess I was in the "how about that rain?" camp, but I had a pretty good excuse. You see, a few months ago we got the windshield replaced in our car (it had a large and growing crack in it) and while I was driving Daisy to school on Tuesday, it suddenly started to rain inside the car. Apparently, ha ha, our mechanic's "glass guy" wasn't very careful about sealing our windshield. Oh, that's a good one.

It rained on me in the car off and on during the drive to Daisy's school because it soon became apparent that the windshield only leaked when we hit the brakes or when the car was pointing downhill. However, since Daisy's school is on a hill, and since my office is basically at sea-level, the drive from Daisy's school to downtown was basically downhill the entire way. Hank and I would sit at a red light, har har, while water streamed down onto the driver's seat from the apparent crack in the windshield seal.

We decided, mid-commute, to drive straight to the mechanic and make him deal with it.

"Franz!" I complained when we got there. "You have to fix our windshield NOW! It is undriveable and we need to get to work. Use duct tape or something, but do it NOW!"

Franz decided that duct tape was a bad idea, so he offered to get us a rental car while he fixed the car properly. And that was how I ended up with what seems to be the world's cheapest car this week, the low-end version of the low end Kia Optima.

Now, I'm not a car snob. Manual windows are not a big deal. Manual door locks are minorly annoying, but again, not a big deal. The fact that the windshield defroster time is measured in hours rather than minutes is frustrating, but again, I can handle that. And 60 mph seems to be the top safe speed of the car, but I don't drive on the freeway that much, so that's ok too.

What put me over the edge this evening, however, was when the guy in front me of me was driving like a complete ass, and I finally had to toot my horn at one of his transgressions.

The Kia Optima horn makes a sound somewhere in between a dying "neeeeeeeeeeee" and a "meh". Totally not cool.

On the plus side, the car does appear to be waterproof.

1 comment:

Ms.PhD said...

I had to rent one of these once. You're so right about the defroster and the manual locks. Annoying! Glad I didn't have to use my horn. Something about a cheapie car that says "meh" is just so... depressing.