Re: 'Your G5 is just as good a car as it was.....it just has a minor injury that, at worst will leave a scar. It will likely be just as fuel efficient, and dependable as it was before the accident.' I'll first acknowledge your sympathy; it means a bunch to me as a fellow vet about my age, thanks ETC(SS) Next... the chief problem with the car I'm rather stressed about... is it doesn't drive the same. Minor parking lot ding, hmm maybe. But it was fast enough to bend the door frame enough to break seal... and also, bend the sheetmetal under the striker (makes sense, the door was latched at time of impact). The damper mount and control arm pivot mounts aren't that far away... Priuses from at least G2 have had to sacrifice in the unibody in order to accommodate the weight of the battery and hybrid system, vs. a pure FWD ICE Toyota subcompact... which is logical for the mfr... so have to go thru the process of assessment (by the guilty party's insurance, since I'm damn sure not going to have my insurance pay for it) to show the car may have a bent unibody. Which will extend the time I may be w/o a car. -- Re: 'I get it. I feel the same way about my base model 2023 GMC, and I loathe every rock chip, ding, and glass chip - but it is what it is.' If this were a ding, I'd be waaay less stressed My Civic had just gotten out of the shop for its bigger accident, when a young girl just decided not to look, and pulled out full-send from a side street in my neighborhood, to hit my LR wheel and quarter panel (luckily I dirve like I'm invisible from 2 decades riding motorcycles... so saw her and sped up a touch to avoid hitting me broadside). That was upsetting... but far less stressful than the possibility the other person's insurance won't total this bent G5, and'll have to make payments on it 6 more yrs, dog-walking down the road -- Not a dig at all on your response -- which is just how I'd frame similar with someone else in my situ. But yeah, that's already been tabled and the next 2 mos are gonna just need some patience Thanks again
Hey thanks bisco -- true... tho tbh I'm far more worried about functional than the aesthetic. Yeah it's a touch embarrassing to assume other punters will think I bashed into someone else... but f*** what they think -- I'm over 50, not YD&FOC anymore Just got off the phone w/ their insurer, which wasn't intuitive... but the right people now know about how it drives... which until they show up to look at the car, is my last bit of input on possible real damage being noticed. As w/ ETC's reply... if this were just a ding I'd be elated, actually -- those take a few days and some paint and they're done (my Civic was done in a week post-covid, when the first impact took a month -- pre-covid supply-chain drama, and now tariffs. But simple door / end-cap dings vs. subframe let alone unibody damage, no comparison). Can't expect a state where everything's shipped in nautically, to ever have that kind of turnaround again, bodyshop-wise) The big Civic accident and subsequent second one years later, were handled by different insurance providers -- can't tell you how important having the right carrier is, to reducing stress. Progressive, at least here, is spendy but sooo much less strewn w/ 'wait, wth? why's that happening now...?' like my own carrier. If I brought in a bit more income, would switch to them immediately -- at least here where I live.
Whilst working on a dear old client of mine (on my 'short list' -- which is quite short and all on it deserve and get gold-star treatment when scheduling)... we came around to the subject of weird crap luck happening end of this year. We all know in other threads how I became a member of this inauspicious club; won't rehash it. But having lived home 15y now... have seen the creep of an ominous and frankly, ratchet phenomenon growing in strength -- 'Xmas people'. We in HI have always welcomed the higher volumes of tourism around our Holiday season, at least since WWI / Territory-of-HI days. But it's only in the last 15y imo, that this pattern became frequent and palpable enough to be noticed. Back when I were growing up here in the '80s... of course there were tourists and loads of them at that. But in general, they all had to squeeze thru a very primitive airport on Maui, after landing in Honolulu first then taking an inter-island here, far more overhead... as well, it was '80s. People also tended not to stay here as long as now, unless they had family here to stay with, as the hotels were very much a premium experience and the hurricane-season holidays weren't attractive enough. So families in Topeka or St. Paul had to save up for a single vacation which took most of their spare cash but would defo be both culture shock and an escape from their home climate. So typically Halloween and Xmas-NYE/D used to be prime tourist traffic. Now however... esp since covid -- the dynamic's changed a lot. (cont. next post)
Halloween tourists are bad enough -- anytime you market a Mardi Gras-like exp in Lahaina, you get what you get... which is a lot of commerce and revenue... but also tonnes more crime and property damage. Garbage people always come bundled w/ festivity... bad roads bring good people, good roads bring bad people, that sort of thing. Seen it all my life, justified in both recognising it elsewhere, and hating the realities that keep it here. But Xmas thru NYD... that threw me, when sensing a shift about maybe 5y after moving here. Not exactly sure what the mechanism is, exactly... but do know loads of people consume drink / drugs and deal w/ indifferent relatives in their house, weeks at a time. People are stressed, I get it. But the feel's distinct from say, when covid stopped air traffic. Same levels of stress... but didn't come with the same behaviours. It's not so much visitors / malihini here lash out due to whatever's happening to them (as during lockdown)... but more lose some crucial cognitive piece of themselves, compelling them to do painfully-dumb shite. That's as close as I can get to succinct. So what happened to me, didn't involve alcohol. But did involve a string of bad decisions by that other party, resulting in something I'd been training myself since the mid-'80s, to avoid -- which is keep my car / bike / hovercraft from being damaged by other drivers. So to have someone do something so bizarrely... well, idiotic... that threw me. But not as much as hearing one of my favourite people on the table, had something equally bad happen to them... Well that's weird now, isn't it. Just statistically, quite unlikely since they schedule only once every couple of months. I won't share their misfortune as that can affect my year, plus respect them greatly... but the mishap was on a similar level to mine. And afterwards, they'd encountered a followup misfortune, eerily similar to my exp, almost the same amt of time after the NYE tangle. Now how unlikely is that to happen to two people...? (cont. next post)
Mine were, minding my own f***ing business on the main drag into town few days ago, under construction... a woman in a Lexus hybrid's stopped on a side street, trying to pull into oncoming traffic, which is thick due to the time of day (7a - 8a is rush hour towards South Maui, where the resorts are). I'm coming at 30 towards her, when she pulls out and sticks half her car in my lane about a block away. But there's no space to pull into oncoming, which is why she stopped. So whilst oncoming passes thick, I pull into the turn markings in the center of the widened road, to go around her. But what does she do? Pull out anyway, causing a near-collision. She had no space in traffic to do this for, but pulled out, directly in my path -- W T F , why...? She got a piece of my mind for her cluelessness, that's for sure. I haven't had a close shave like that, since AZ... which is Y2Ks. I always second-guess everyone... but this piece of work did the most illogical act possible in that situation, and was lucky to avoid a collision in which she were totally at fault. Didn't stop here. Like I said, cognitive mental midgetry... and she's faaar from the only one to do this, right around this time of year -- it's something I have to assume will happen at any time, from anyone, out of character (esp now, since my NYE culprit is nothing like that, the rest of the year). My take... is I'm not the most social butterfly. I have a few friends I value and who value me, and some clients I value enough to take the relationship into social stuff. But mixers have never appealed to me, so avoid them. And that perspective may be why I'm noticing this quality in people normally sane, even if met during the holidays. Just one incident of this brain-lock... and boom -- they invent a bunch of misery where none existed and was easily avoidable with a single decision. As before, my big mishap involved a series of bad decisions on their part. How do you run let's-get-home-yesterday full parking speed, into a parked car, when you've driven 35y and did nothing of the kind that long...? By not being present... which leads into my next thought about this phenom. I recall living with my mentor's mentor, in their luxurious Wailuku Heights home in the Y2Ks, just after coming back to Maui from a couple of weeks in cloister at our temple. This man said a lot of dumb Boomer shit, but also some serious gems of wisdom. One I still carry to this day... is asking myself 'what am I doing right now?' Just to have that awareness in the present moment. I'm walking, I'm concentrating on where I'm going. I'm driving. Like a mantra of sorts. Keeps my rather buoyant mind from floating off, which is how my teacher at the dojo described me. Practical advice for someone defo on the ASD spectrum and possibly (but undiagnosed) ADHD. (cont. next post)
Don't want to ever claim I have this covered, as demonstrably do not and probably will not, in this lifetime. But have been reciting this to myself 20y+ now... so whatever dividend that brings, can defo claim to enjoy some of it. But the headspace in people in this funny window of the year, that two weeks around NYD... is fraught with dumbarse decisions. And I'm wondering if this is a case of just exposing those with obviously clinically-dangerous needs, or does something unusual inspire this give-no-f***s attitude in the air somehow? Have been seeing this trend get more and more common, every year. This time, it finally got me and my gold client, at the same time -- twice. Weird
