Diagnosis: Your Car Hates You

The mechanic finally got around to taking a look at my poor pathetic mode of transportation. Their opinion? I am mean to my car. The guy calls me at about 7:30 last night. What he's still doing at his garage at that hour, I don't know...obviously I was at the bar by then...but it's nice to know he's dedicated to his work.

Mechanic: "Hi Sam, just wanted to give you a call about your truck."
Me: "Great. How does it look?""
Mechanic: "Well, it's not good. Tell me- did you recently hit anything?"
Me: "Well, it's the end of winter in New England. I'm sure I've hit a lot of things. Not like kids, or animals, or anything...but probably my share of potholes."
Mechanic: Yeah...that makes sense. You've got a few problems that we'll need to fix. First of all, your front right rotor is shattered. It isn't worn out, it's more like you hit something and it broke into a bunch of pieces. Actually that whole assembly is destroyed. It's lucky you had it towed in here because that wheel was actually about to fall off of your car*.
Me: "Wow. Good thing."
Mechanic: "The second thing we'd want to fix is your shocks. You have no shocks on the front of your car. They're so....fluid....not even working...much smoother ride..." (at this point I had no idea what he was talking about and kind of tuned out.)
Me: "Okay...smoother ride sounds good."
Mechanic: "So, I'm thinking at the absolute most it's going to end up being about $900 and I can hopefully get it back to you by the end of the week."
Me: "OK. Thanks?"

I wish I knew anything about cars. I think he's also doing something else to the car, and according to my companions at the bar the front end stuff will take a lot of labor. So maybe $900 isn't the worst price of all time. But then I think about the bluebook value of my truck (maaaybe $1500 if I was lucky) and shudder. I have doubled the value of my truck twice in 2 years. The thing is a rolling moneypit.

*Aside: Those of you who read my previous blog about the trip from Atlanta will remember that this is the EXACT same problem that I had two years ago. And which I drove on for a grand total of 3 hrs on an interstate prior to getting repairs. Wildcard!