Accident In Amarillo

Sigh. When somebody hits your car it’s like a kick in the gut. When that car is a beautiful piece of machinery like Charlie and it isn’t even yours it’s like being sucker-punched by Jean Claude Van Damme. Well guess what. My stomach hurts.

Yesterday Jim and I were at the Authors and Artists Expo at the Deep In The Heart Of Route 66 International Festival. We met some fantastic roadies and were excited to attend the sockhop last night. On the way back to the car the heel of my shoe broke so Jim continued on and was going to pick me up. After about 15 minutes and no sign of him I felt like something was wrong. Then I saw him walking towards me and I knew it.

Somebody had backed into poor Charlie, denting the front quarter panel so that we couldn’t open the door. Now, while this is bad, the experience did have a couple of highlights that made it less so.

First of all, when Jim had gotten to the car a police officer was already there because the woman who’d hit the car called them herself! Then she knocked on doors to see if somebody who lived nearby owned the car, then waited at least fifteen minutes. We called OnStar and had a tow truck in about ten minutes, and Officer Ramirez waited until Charlie was on his way to the local Chevrolet dealership and ferried us back to the hotel.

If your car’s going to get hit, having honest people, a great company, and a friendly officer involved makes it a lot less painful.

Our stay in Amarillo is now extended through Monday. That means once we’re back on the road we won’t be able to take as much of the original alignment as we’d hoped and we’re going to have some really long driving days ahead of us. But, as I mentioned when I first started writing about this adventure, something’s bound to go wrong. What matters is how we handle it. 

We just secured a rental car and are heading back to the festival, and tomorrow we’ll explore Amarillo and hopefully catch up on our pictures and posts. And one thing I know: the people we meet in Amarillo, the people we’ve already met, are going to ensure our stay makes up for that little bit of ache.