Jude - 1, Utility Pole - 0

[judecorp]

I had my first ever car-damage incident of my life today, which is pretty effing amazing considering I've done home visits for 3 years, with the last 2 in Dorchester and Roxbury. I drove past the home of my new family and went to turn around in a really narrow driveway on a very busy street (Quincy St. in Dorchester, for the interested), and when I went to back out of the driveway onto the street (with the bazillion cars), I rubbed the side of the car on a nasty utility pole. It made one of those awful sounds and I'm sure everyone was watching. Whoops.

When I got to the house, I got out to survey the damage. I was going to take a picture, but I forgot. Anyway, everything from the front wheel-well on the driver's side to the curve of the bumper was scratched up and brown and it looked AWFUL. I tried to rub some of the creosote out but it wouldn't budge.

I got home and tried to wash it off with soap and water (no way) and then WD-40 (still a no go). I remembered that I had grabbed a tube of that "as seen on TV" scratch remover (you know, the one that purports to be for any color car) from my Dad's house when we were cleaning it out and figured, 'Eh, what the heck.' And HOLY CRAP, it got every speck of brown nastiness off of the car.

There are still a couple of good-sized scratches in the car (where I rubbed the paint clear off to the base) - one on the side of the car itself and the other on the plastic bumper - but without the two feet of brown scrapes you can hardly notice them. And now that the brown stuff is gone and not drawing attention to the area, you can't see the little bit of dent, either. Not too shabby.

Flawless victory.

Comments

[odd-dog.livejournal.com]

make sure to touch-up. Rust is BAD NEWS.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm going to ask at a Lappan's or Auto Zone or something about touch-up paint or something to seal it up with over the weekend.

[scirocco.livejournal.com]

Destroying the car before a replacement is procured is a bad idea. :)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

The car is not destroyed. I repeat, the car is not destroyed! I did amazing things to it, you would not even believe I hosed it!

All this from a man who had a big snow hole eat his car.

[scirocco.livejournal.com]

Hey, we had a second car at the time! :P

[eeka13.livejournal.com]

DUDE you must lend me the AS SEEN ON TV cleaner stuff!

Someone hit the slugbug. Grr.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Yeah, you can borrow it. When do you want to come get it? All you need is a clean, dry cloth.

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

I love you forever that you said "Flawless Victory". =)

I'm glad you got it. I was thinking "Rubbing Compound" while watching Tim Allen on Inside the Actors Studio and reading this, so I probably would have recommended too much. ;)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

You would love me more if I talked about sci-fi. :)

I'm glad I found that stuff in Dad's house, too. It's probably ruining the paint job as we speak but I don't even care!

[sassywoman.livejournal.com]

Oops. I hate it when I hit things. I've damaged our honda civic by backing into a parking garage poll, and damaged my old saturn by running over my cousins mail box in Indy. Oh, before that I ran off my grandparents drive way (it was slanted, I kept going straight). They had boulders lining the side of the driveway I went off. I was suspended in the air and had to hit it in drive to get off the boulder. Oops. That did big damage to the axel (sp?)
Glad you got the majority of the paint off!!!!!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Woah, some of those incidents sound REALLY scary. I'm glad you always came out okay!

[sassywoman.livejournal.com]

I came out much better then the car! I'm a spaz driver when it comes to backing out.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha. You need extra mirrors or something! (Maybe extra insurance!)

[sassywoman.livejournal.com]

I think my next car will have those back up sensors!! Extra mirrors and insurance probably wouldn't hurt either!

[wazroth.livejournal.com]

So I guess you're not counting that time I bumped into the car in the parking lot, eh? And then nearly got us killed by cutting off a tractor trailer?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, *I* wasn't driving either of those times. :)