You're not going to believe what happened to my car this time

I think it's fair to say that my car, a 2000 Toyota Corolla, has not led a particularly lucky existence. The day after I moved to Maryland for grad school... the window was smashed and my brand new CD player stolen. Then some vandal smashed the tail light for no reason, a few months later. Then all was well for a few years, until I got rear-ended on a highway off-ramp, smashing the bumper and severely damaging my touring bike which--as luck would have it--was being carried on the back of my car. (On the plus side, the guy who hit me was totally a nice responsible guy, and his insurance took care of everything.) Then, in the last year, I've had two more windows smashed by random vandals.

So, when my roommate walked in yesterday evening and asked, "Dan, have you seen your car lately?" ... I got pretty worried.


It had been a lovely warm day. I went for a run from about 6:30-7:30pm, just before dark. There were some moderate gusts of wind, but nothing too crazy. I ate dinner and got ready to go out and watch the Cornell Big Red (my alma mater!!) play Kentucky, Cornell's first NCAA Sweet 16 appearance in a loooong time.

I'm not sure what went through my head right when Nathan beckoned me to come outside and take a look... had my car been stolen? Spray-painted? Set on fire? Had all the windows been smashed in the past hour for no apparent reason?

The truth was far, far stranger. A very large tree had decided to practice its piledriver moves directly on the hood of my car...

Let's take a closer look...

No, no, no, that doesn't do it justice. To really appreciate this bizarre situation, we need to take a broader look...

Normally, we have a tree on the left of the driveway, and another one on the right. Now, we had one in the middle too.

The tall and apparently healthy tree on the left side had snapped in half, and the top half of the trunk managed to get tangled in the power lines and land, perfectly vertical, on my hapless car.

The fire department came and... put caution tape around everything. Uhm. Excellent. Thanks? I guess that keeps everyone safe or something?

I retrieved a few important things from the trunk of the car. I went in the front and got the insurance and registration. The tree wiggled and creaked precariously on the hood. I wondered how much engine damage there was. I tried to start the car: it started, but it definitely didn't sound right. The tree wiggled and creaked some more. I got out of there.

I talked to the fire department, the power company, and got some insurance info. The Cornell-Kentucky game was about to start. Rather than sit around and commiserate with my poor, poor car, I decided to go out to Penn Quarter Tavern in DC and cheer on Cornell. The game had already stated, and Cornell was up 14-10 against the #1 team in the tournament!!!! Nathan was kind enough to give me a ride. LET'S GO RED!!!

But... we lost, 62-45, mostly due to a pretty disastrous spell in the last 10 minutes of the first half :-( It was a crazy long shot, and a pretty good game nonetheless. (USA Today had a highly amusing article about the David-and-Goliath matchup between Cornell and Kentucky, by the way.)

Well, I got home, and the tree hadn't fallen over or anything...

Soon, at about 1am, the amusingly named Asplundh Tree Experts showed up with a large, impressive bucket truck. (But seriously, is "Asplundh" not the funniest name you've ever heard??!!) They're contractors for PepCo, our utility company, and were assigned to remove the tree from the power lines. They told me it was dangerous to have touched the car with the tree lying across it and the power lines (which were not damaged). In my years of physics learning, I have not once encountered a tree that was capable of conducting electricity, so I just brushed this off, and refrained from going all physics on them...

They also told me that they weren't responsible for any damage incurred by the car while they cut down the tree. However, they actually did a really good and careful job removing the tree. It took quite a while, but they didn't further damage the car other than some scratches due to falling branches. In retrospect, I probably should've encouraged them to drop logs on the windshield and otherwise smash up the car pretty good... this would be a lot easier to deal with if the car had been totaled. I'm just not a big fan of insurance fraud or senseless destruction, however. :-/

Not such a pretty sight. Smashed hood, cracked or scratched windshield, busted wipers, scratched quarter-panel, a door that doesn't quite open right, and some very disquieting noises from the engine.  It's kind of hard to convey how deep the dent in the hood is.  If I could've opened the hood, I might've been able to get some idea of the engine damage.

Got it towed to a local body shop approved by the insurance company. (Both the tow truck driver and the tree guys swore they'd never seen anything like this before!!!) Not looking forward to getting an estimate back on this, especially since we have an extreeeeeemely high deductible. I've asked my landlady about whether her homeowners' insurance may cover it, but I'm not too optimistic about that either :-(

Anyway, I hope this freak accident has been a source of amusement, at least!!! My irascible brother-in-law Sam has made a couple of, uh, lolcars out of it:

If you're feeling especially generous or amused, you can even a few bucks to Dan's Car Repair Fund™. I guarantee that 100% of the proceeds will go towards repairing this car :-)