...Nothing could possibly go wrong with this, right?

The insurance company had a tow truck tow my Jeep to a shop and had the rear window replaced, since the movers saw fit to demolish not only the window but also the hinge assembly.  All was well and the body shop decided to tow the Jeep back to a place where I could pick it up at the airport. 

As soon as they made a tight turn, the whole fucking Jeep hard top fell off the Jeep and into the street.

Kind of let that image sink into your mind.  It's actually funny in retrospect.  But I digress.

I have no idea how this happened.  Did they take a turn way too tightly?  Accelerate too quickly?  Take out the bolts and forget to secure it?  WTF?

(But, luckily, they're claiming this as part of my insurance so I get a free top.  Yay.  I think.)

In the span of 48 hours, no less.

I used up my grace period at the Drum Inn, and with my apartment not being available until early September, I was forced to come up with another plan for housing.  I only knew one person in the Fort Drum area who was unmarried/no kids, but he was at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana for a month, so I couldn't get in touch with him.  I was forced to accept "temporary housing"

Yes, from the same Army that brought you Walter Reed comes "Temporary Housing".  Every Army base has some organization called "Army Lodging", which basically provides a half-assed attempt to provide living quarters for single people, usually transients and single officers.  It's largely sub-par, and a prime example is the Temporary Lodging at Fort Drum, which is housing people in cheaply-made buildings. 

Military people might say "I stayed in pretty bad quarters in Iraq".  Well, true, but you weren't paying $20/night for them either, were you?  $20/night got me one room, no air conditioning, communal bathroom, and paper-thin walls.  The occupants...well...I think they're people that got kicked out of their wives' places.  They also seem to have some anger management issues because they are always slamming the doors, not to mention drinking excessively.  It was almost as bad as the "Pleasure Cove" we passed up in Panama City.

For that reason, I furiously text-messaged Captain Ed down in JRTC and found out where he kept a spare key.  I drove the hell out of the Temporary Lodging as quickly as I could and holed up in Ed's place.

Along the way, though, I stopped to pick up a sandwich, and as I was pulling out of the parking lot, I got rear ended.

This is the 3rd time I've been rear-ended in the Jeep, and, just like the last two times, I came out of it without a scratch.  Hooray for all-metal American-built cars. 

It appears I needed more than brake pads.  I needed new rotors as well.  They were quite warped.  I wondered why the brakes felt so funny. 

Additionally, I brought the Jeep in and the mechanic started talking about the New York State Inspection.  My car is still registered in South Carolina, hence it doesn't need an inspection.  The counter to this argument is that on Fort Drum, you need a NY state inspection.  Fortunately for me, I never got rid of my Fort Bragg NC sticker, so I can basically drive through the gate at will and no one says anything to me. 

While I was getting the Jeep "inspected", the mechanic, of course, tells me that everything is wrong with the Jeep and it's a miracle it's even driving down the road.  I know I'm probably due for tires before the winter, but I can hold off on it for now.  Nevertheless, the mechanic told me that my tires would not pass inspection, even though they probably have more tread left on them than most new street tires.  And, of course, I must replace all four tires at once, lest I cause catastrophic damage to the Jeep. 

I do know a little about auto maintenance, but I'm in that sophomoric phase where I think I know a lot more than I really do.  Which is actually worse than knowing nothing at all.  Literally, a conversation between me and a mechanic could easily go like this.

Mechanic:  Ah, let me gauge this thingy here.  Oh no.  Now that's bad.
Me:  What?
Mechanic:  Well, your flux capacitor here.  It's not operating at 1.21 gigawats.
Me:  Ah, of course, I remember hearing about that part on like foreign cars and stuff.  I didn't know I had one of those.
Mechanic:  I mean, you can drive on it for a while, but once you hit 88 miles per hour.
Me:  Yeah, you're probably right.  I guess I should really should get that fixed...

At any rate, I continued paying for an inspection, since I can legally get away with not having it inspected, but the mechanic kept insisting.

"Just put your top up and we can gauge the visibility through the windows"

I take a look at the open-topped Jeep.

"I guess you can call that 'unobstructed 360-degree vision', if I'm not mistaken".  Never mind the fact that I will be putting the hard top back on in winter, thus completely making an inspection on the windows meaningless.  As long as I still have the "Fort Bragg" sticker on the Jeep, I'm still technically on the right side of the law.  I think.

The focus question comes about because there were so many really bad auto maintenance places when I was at Fort Rucker in Alabama.  I took my old Saturn SL2 in to the auto shops and every one of them would remark "I've never worked on a Saturn before".  When I traded the Saturn for the Jeep, I thought this issue would be over, but as fate would have it, one person was installing a trailer hitch on my Jeep and remarked "I've never worked on a Jeep before".  You know, not like they haven't been making them for the last 60 years or so.

Focus:  When you move to a new area, how do you decide what auto place to take your car to for maintenance more complicated than a simple oil change or tire rotation?  Word of Mouth?  Website Reviews?  Just take it to the dealer?




RIP 1997 Saturn SL2.  Killed at the hands of mechanics in Daleville, Alabama after 140,000 miles :(

(No pun intended with the "Rubicon Jeep")

The hard top has come off.  For one person, this is no small feat. 

I can't believe the number of people that walked by me as I tried to man-handle the hard top into my apartment.  Yeah, I obviously don't need help doing this.

Finally, I used the hard top to block all access in and out of the apartment.  If you want to pass, you have to help me move my hard top.  (Machiavelli:  necessity drives everythng)

Now the hard top occupies a place in my living room.  I'm not certain what to do with it.  When I leave the Captain's Career Course, I'll just have the movers pack it up and move it to my new house, wherever it is.  I'll just make certain to get a place with a garage.

I am just now grabbing my coffee, and I'm bleeding from the effort of moving my hard top, so excuse the way this entry looks.




I'm too lazy to rotate this picture, so just turn your head to the right.  (Get some exercise)

Just bought it from Quadratec last night. I figure with the tax refund I'm getting (just under 2 grand), I should be able to afford this.

Not the Jeep itself (I already have that), but the soft top. I have a black Jeep and I like the look of a tan soft top on it. I figure next weekend will be spent installing the thing and taking off the hard top (provided the weather agrees), and then St. Patrick's Day Weekend will be for cruising Panama City or Destin in the Jeep. Just in time for Spring Break.

College chicas, beware.

An interesting Jeep-ism for soft top Jeep owners is that they like to leave their doors unlocked. If anyone wants to steal anything from inside the Jeep, they'd rather they just open the door and take it, rather than slit the top and take it.





Below the cut is my favorite soft-top Jeep story from college (summer 2001) when I was in Hawaii. Beware, it's not rated G. But it's funny.


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