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WARNING THIS IS REALLY LONG! 7 hi-res pics 56K!
======================================So I was talkin to this girl and I get a voicemail out of the blue (phone didn't do the call waiting thing...), so she says I can check that and she'll call back in 5 mins. So I check it, have no idea who it is and delete it. Then I wait for like a half hour and I try calling her, no answer... so I wait another half hour and I'm like screw this, I'm gonna cruise around the countryside (she IM'd me and said her bro got a call and she'll talk to me later, that's cool).
So I'm driving around the country side and say to myself:
"It's 12:30am, I got 3/4 tank of gas, and Lethbridge is only 2 hours away... why not just go to the border and come back..."So I'm cruising this "frontage road" that ran along I-15 for a ways until it ended up being a dirt road. Figured my car was dirty already, let's see where it goes. Well, lots of turns later trying to get back twoard I-15, I find this really cool one that was all twisty and hilly. So I pretend like I'm a rally car driver and let me tell ya, this SVT is helluva lot more fun than my old Contour was on dirt. The rear end does exactly what I want it to in turns...
Anyhow, after going over I-15 and finding another "frontage road" on the other side, I repair the loose ground wire to my amp (I guess it wasn't crimped tight enough, the dirt road helped it fall out) and I was on my way to find an on ramp.
Get on I-15 and head up. Figure
"Ok, now I have 1/2 a tank, damn bad mileage on dirt roads... If I don't find a gas station within the next 50 miles, I'm turning around." Well, I find a gas station, and pay $1.38/gal for 91 octane.
So I'm on my way again, this time changed my plans to actually go to Lethbridge since now I have plenty of gas to get there and back. Well, I continue up I-15 for maybe 5 miles... and....
Here's some more math for ya! But this time it's like elementary school level:
This:
Plus this:
Equals all of the following:
The last pic is most important!So yeah, dang big ass rabbit is haulin ass across the road and I nail it at 80mph. I'm like
"Sh*t, the bumper is definatly broke from that!"I stop to check and hear this hissing noise and do a quick looksie on the side of the interstate, thinking
"sumvabitch I punctured the radiator, I hope I can get it home." Then I take a pic of the rabbit and head back to the gas station.
Get back there and open the hood for some more in depth inspection and realize
"Where's the grille?!?!" I was thinking
"Crap, I don't know if I want to go back for it if my car is losing coolant..." Then I start on the inspection and while opening the hood to check the coolant level, I remember my coolant is orange, not green. So it's full and I keep lookin, oh, broke one of the fan mounts, that needs fixed, but I can still get home. Keep lookin, go to the hit spot and remember from high school auto shop that we put ultraviolet dye in the refrigerant so we can find leaks... well, IT WORKS!!!! heh... So the oil cooler punched a hole in the condensor. Well, that needs fixed too... So then I decide to go find the grille since nothing driveability wise got damaged.
So I drive back to the scene and it's not there, cause I remember it being attached when I did the looking, So I go to the "Authorized Vehicles Only" turn around where I turned around earliar and drive like 40mph up the road until I spot this:
Yay, so I gather my pieces and head on home, watching my guages like a hawk in case I actually did puncture the radiator and/or oil cooler.
So anyway, all that happend like 100 miles away from here, and I'm not pissed off (well, just a little!), but really glad it wasn't something bigger like a fox or deer (or really bad like a moose or something!).
SOOOOOO.... anyone know if a radiator shop can fix an A/C condensor and if a body shop can repair the bumper? If the bumper can't be fixed, looks like I'm gonna bust out some black duct tape and fix it up until I get back from Kuwait.
Now I'm not sure what I'm gonna do about the grille...
