The details aren’t terribly important (I feel that I got screwed) but I decided not to get the insurance company involved and just have the repairs done on my own dime to put it all behind me.

On Monday, we dropped the car off at a local body shop.

On Thursday, it was ready and looking good as new.

Total damage was $1200-something…

I stopped in to pick it up, pulled out my wallet, and then they said, “Oh, we don’t take charge cards…”

Say what?

Guess what?

I hit him.

I swore at him.

I pulled over.

Turns out he was a really nice guy, thankfully.

Terrible driver but a nice guy.

We did the whole police report thing — he admitted it was totally his fault and then guess what happened?

Yep — I got the ticket.

Seriously, I’ve lost all confidence in law enforcement. The responding officer was pleasant enough but totally ignored what both us said happened.

Looking to do the bare minimum required in this non-event fender-bender, the officer just took the easy route — the car in the back is always at fault. That was me.

Um, hello? Last time I checked, u-turns aren’t allowed…

For real, I think the officer would have given me the ticket if this dude were a wrong way driver on the highway… I only wish I could be so lazy at my own job…

So now I don’t know what to do…

The car I hit (a HUGE contractor’s truck) wasn’t damaged at all and as far as the police report is concerned, he wasn’t in the wrong either.

My car, though, has some mega bumber damage to the point that I can’t turn left without the tire rubbing against the wheel well.

Do I get the insurance company involved when the police report is (wrongfully) stacked against me or do I just plunk down the thousand dollars that I’m just guessing it’ll cost to fix to the point that I can turn left again?

Not exactly how I wanted to start the month…

Oh, and it’s amazing that you can still pretty much get anywhere by turning right… I learned that tonight on the way home…

It was hard to imagine with it being in the windy and cold 40′s yesterday while a year ago we were cruising with the top down in the sunshine — it just doesn’t seem like it was the same time of year.

But honestly, it’s one of those points of reference that I’m able to immediately go back to. When I think about all of the things we’ve accomplished since then, it makes me feel pretty good.

No, I’m not going to go all wishy-washy here and talk about how a near death experience changed my life for the better. Hardly.

It wasn’t a near death experience in my head — my thoughts as we were sliding sideways (and backwards) towards the guardrail were:

• Please don’t let another car hit us.
• Why aren’t we slowing down – my foot *is* on the brake!
• There’s plenty of shoulder for us to stop before the guardrail.
• Oh crap — this is going to hurt!

When the car finally hit the guardrail, and stopped, it turned out that we didn’t hit any other cars and there really wasn’t enough of a shoulder. Oh yeah, we weren’t hurt either.

Since then, going back to my reference point, the thing that I notice that has changed the most, physically, is the exterior of our house. It’s all new — and somehow we managed to pay for it too.

On the inside, we tore out a ton of plaster, fixed a plumbing problem, and threw out tons and tons of junk that we had sitting in a storage unit (to the tune of $140/month).

Financially things have been nothing but positive, with the credit card debt eliminated and my 401k finally maxxed out.

Over this last year, things even got comfy enough that I threw in the towel and stopped working so much (outside of the office).

Quitting the hockey team was the first big step — dumping a long time difficult and frustrating client was the next. Can’t tell you how nice it was on Sunday to return from a weekend away and not have a single business related email in my inbox. Not one.

That’s been a huge change for me — and in just one year.

With the accident back in May, that resulted in a repair bill that indicated that they probably should have totalled the car, I wasn’t expecting good news.

But it was good news.

It doesn’t appear that my rates have gone up — and having been with Allstate for years, I was never ushered in to the “Accident Forgiveness” plan that they advertise so heavily — so I really expected them to jump (or have them drop me entirely like they did with my homeowners insurance.)

Total bill is still an outrageous $1071 for six months.

Is it just me, or is that really high for a 30 year old married male with no tickets and just this one accident on his record?

For a while there, I thought I might get away without paying anything, since I hadn’t receive anything from Allstate since the week of the accident. But they got me. Oh well… It hurts this month’s budget quite a bit, but I still had it in the back of my mind, so I can’t really call it an unexpected expense.

The car looks… darker. I’m not sure if it was just the light or what, but it looks to be a couple of shades darker than it was. It’s also not as smooth a coat as it was. You know, when you look at it at different angles, there are a few uneven areas, but from a distance, it looks just fine.

The new roof, with a new back window, is great. The back window hasn’t been that clear since the day I bought it.

The new wheels, that supposedly don’t match because BMW no longer makes the 5 spoke wheels I had, look like perfect matches to me.

The damaged areas also look great.

There looked to be a fresh scratch, rather deep too, in the passenger side door (the side that wasn’t involved in the accident at all), but that was the only noticeable blemish. Considering the improvement everywhere else, we decided to ignore it. (I say that now, but my focus will zero in on that scratch for years to come, I’m sure.)

Another downside was that the radio is locked again. A few years ago, I changed the battery myself and it initiated the antitheft “lock” on the radio. Now the radio asks you to enter a password. I don’t have that password.

The last time this happened, we brought it to a BMW dealership and they reset it — but never gave me the code. Sigh… Looks like I’ll be taking it in again. Argh.

In the end, the whole experience wasn’t that bad. I can’t really bash Allstate, and considering the final bill was double their estimate, I almost have to praise them. That is, unless they double my rates when I’m up for renewal later next month.

That’s about what I had expected.

Apparently we tore a hole in the floor of the car which still needs to be stitched up, but the body work is done and the car had a primer coat put on yesterday. I’m looking forward to seeing how it comes out.

And then driving it to see if it feels the same. You hear so many horror stories from people claiming that their cars never drove the same after an accident. I’d like to experience that firsthand and then make my own judgement.

Also, from the Allstate side of things, I still haven’t had to pay my deductible. I’m not sure why, I’m not even sure how that’s supposed to work. In the mail, I’ve received a couple of things from them basically confirming that a claim was indeed filed and that a check was issued — but no “bill”.

Not sure if this is the norm, but I’ve got $500 ready and off to the side for when the time comes.

Well, I’m not going to go that far just yet.

We’re up to 5 phone calls so far since I originally filed my claim online on Saturday after the accident. I received a call from a pleasant woman that afternoon confirming the information I’d submitted online — or more accurately, I had to regurgitate all of the info again.

On Wednesday, I received a call from “Joe” at Allstate and went through it all again. Where was the accident? How fast were you going? Did you get a plate number? Where is the car now? I’m not sure if it’s that they’re disorganized, or if they’re going to sit and compare my answers from the recordings they have before determining what to do.

Yesterday morning, rinse and repeat, but this time it was “Angela” from Allstate. One thing I do have to mention is that the staff they have in their call centers are all very pleasant. They all spoke the Queen’s English (which is unusually rare these days), so at no point did I feel the need to hang up and call them back hoping for a better agent. I was never on hold for more than 20 seconds, and they didn’t sound as if they were brain dead zombies reading from a script.

The in the afternoon, the adjuster called. He was “Mike” from Allstate, though he’s likely a hired gun who works for a ton of insurance companies. Again, very upbeat and pleasant guy. Not being from the area, I asked where he’d take a BMW in that condition and he suggested a “Johnson Autobody” and gave me the number. I told him, “Sure, that sounds fine,” and took down the contact info.

In the meantime, he said he’d call them to give them the heads up and that I should call them later on in the afternoon to authorize them to pick the car up. Wow — this is sounding too easy.

Not 5 minutes later, my phone rings again, this time it’s Wayne from Johnson Autobody. Very nice guy. He went through everything that was going to happen — and all around seemed like a really great guy — over the phone. After explaining the brief history of the company, he gave me three contacts to call at the autobody place in case I had any questions at all.

Certainly not the stereotypical call you’d get from an autobody — no loud torque wrenches in the background, no loud music blaring, no gum smacking, and again, he spoke proper English — very VERY professional! I was starting to think this whole thing might not be as stressful as I’d originally thought.

Received another call from the adjuster, Mike, with the estimate (ouch!). I told him I’d already spoken with Wayne and things were good to go — he offered to leave the check with the car at the Citgo so the Autobody could pick them both up. His job was done.

I didn’t leave the keys with the Citgo after the accident, even though it wasn’t drivable, but I wasn’t too keen on leaving my keys there so I made the journey out to Johnson Autobody to drop them off. Looks a bit like the picture they have on their website — it’s tucked behind another auto place, so it’s a bit tough to see from the road, but once I stepped into the office, what little remaining apprehension I had over the whole thing quickly evaporated.

I wish this place were closer to home — I think I may have finally found a mechanic’s place that I like; this whole thing is going to turn out okay.

I’ll report again when the car is ready to come home with how they did.

This weekend my wife and I were involved in an accident on the highway.

Cruising along with the top down in my ego-tag at highway speed yesterday morning, the car in front of us kicked a large truck tire re-tread into the air which struck the hood of our car.

Evidently swerving at high speed doesn’t quite work like it does in the movies. We spun around a few times across three lanes and ended up facing the wrong direction and tangled up in the three steel cord style of guardrail.

The great news, at first, having gone from 70 mph to zero in the span of less than two seconds, was that we were both okay. Not a scratch between us.

I have to credit BMW — the outcome should have been worse. In fact, I’d bet if we’d been in one of our other vehicles, it would have been worse.

Who’d have thought a convertible would be safe?

After the fact, the news got even better.

As we stood on the side of the highway watching a wrecker tug our car down from the tangled mess of guardrails and torn up asphalt and onto a flatbed it hit me: the last remaining relic of my time as a frivolous spender was gone.

And you know what? That felt good.

Sure, I’d just trashed a $50k car, that at one time meant so much to me, and one that I’d worked so hard to pay for — but since I started to control my spending, I’d realized that it was quite possibly my biggest financial mistake.

Even seconds before that tire tread was thrown into the air, the car was no longer the status symbol I’d originally thought it was, but more a symbol of personal embarrassment — a blatant sign of my former financial irresponsibility. As a result, in recent years, it rarely left the garage.

All in all, a good day in my financial quest.

On a side note, I feel I should give kudos to Drew Loethscher, Victor the tow truck driver, and the rest of the folks at Tolland Citgo in Connecticut. They towed the car and were very welcoming considering the situation. Definitely not the stereotypical gas station/towing company experience.

And so far so good on the Allstate front. I filed a claim online yesterday and a friendly claims rep called yesterday afternoon; though she apparently didn’t read anything that I had originally submitted.

Somehow, I think I’ll be explaining the situation at least 10 more times to them — though the police report could answer and verify everything I’ve already told them.

Here’s to hoping that everything works out on that end I won’t be added to the already long list of very dissatisfied Allstate auto insurance customers.