What the hell. I am in a weird mood today and I feel like venting a little. The fact that a complete stranger maybe reading this is bizarre as all get out, but hey we are all voyeurs in one way or another!

About five weeks ago I just put brand new tires on my car, got the air conditioner fixed, and put a brand new stereo and speakers in it. It really was about time. I have had the thing for 7 years and it needed all the work that I had put into it. It was a Saturday morning and I had spent about two hours putting all the door panels back in the car and vacuuming and getting the thing clean. I was pretty happy with myself. Sometimes you get a good feeling when doing simple things. Leave it to this **** whole of a town to take this simple pleasure away!

I go to work that night and leave the thing parked on the street at a parking meter. When I get back from work: POOF the car has vanished. Grumble. I file the police report and realize it is the bus for me for the foreseeable future. Now see, I was looking at the silver lining in the cloud trying to make this f?d up situation seem not so bad. My doctor has been pressuring me to get more exercise, so this is a good excuse for me to do a bunch of walking. Besides has anyone noticed the price of gas these days? Oh, and like all of us selfish people the car was an SUV, so it tended to drink much of the dead dinosaur. Trying to put a positive spin on what really is a pretty messed up situation.

So I file my insurance claim and wait. Then out of the blue I get a call from a police officer asking me if I owned a such and such type of car. ?Yeah, it was stolen about three weeks ago? I say. The officer informs me that my ride has been involved in a hit and run accident and that it will be towed. Great. Just as my insurance company was going to write a check and I could get off the bus and back into an air pollution machine, another wrench gets thrown into the works. Now, the insurance company has to evaluate the thing to see if I get to wait two months to have it fixed, or if it is a write off.

If only it was that easy. See because the thing was involved in a hit a run accident (the person driving ran after smashing it up) the police impounded the car pending investigation. On one hand you would think this would be a good thing. The police are actually investigating an auto theft! Ha! The only effect impounding the car had was to make it nearly impossible for the insurance adjuster to get a chance to see the thing. The police aren?t investigating anything.

So after spending half an eternity on the phone trying to get the insurance company to expedite a decision I am told that I have to personally go in and have the car released. You have to be a car owner in a culture of car owners to understand that this is a royal pain in the ass when you don?t have a car. To a spoiled driver a task that would have taken about 15 minutes turns into a 3 hour ordeal. Waiting for the bus, etc. Remember, I am a spoiled person here. By the time I make it to the impound lot I am drenched with sweat and generally in a foul mood. I had called ahead asking what paper work I needed. I don?t even know why I ever bother. You see, NO ONE bothered to tell me that I had to be interviewed by a detective to make sure I wasn?t in possession of the car at the time of the accident BEFORE I would be aloud to release the vehicle. A total waste of time and sweat. I have to do this whole thing over again the next day because the detective is out of the office and won?t be in. Half my day flushed down a toilet because someone was to lazy to mention to me on the phone that I needed to do this. Oy!

So the next day I repeat my adventure on the bus and go to the interview. After waiting an hour I am told that it is just a formality and basically get sent on my way!

OK, so my problems aren?t anything like the one people in London are going through and they really seem petty when weighed against the suffering that others in the world are going through. Does that make them any less real? I?ve been trying real hard to convince myself that this has all been a good thing. I mean two days in a row that I get good exercise and a whole month and a half using public transportation! The amount of money that I spend on the bus each month is less than an eighth of the total cost of operating my SUV.

Was this going any ware? Not really. I told you I was just venting some frustrations. If you have made it this far through my tale, I applaud your tenacity. Thanks for reading, now go think some positive thoughts and live a happy and peaceful life.

Long posts are boring when they say nothing. At least yours is a story - good job! Well, I don't worry about cars where I am, or even busses in general. Just walk to the Skytrain and go where I want or connect to the subway. It doesn't always work, but taxis are plentiful. Sometimes back to the basics is a good thing!

Don't you just love insurance companies and the police system and nuckleheads that give partial information on the phone. When that happens to me I ask them "where do I send the bill for my time?"