My Independence Day vacation time hasn’t been all that cool…or at least the early parts of it.

After finishing work for the week on Wednesday afternoon, Colleen and I decided to take a little drive off by ourselves for a while. We needed to get out of the house, maybe check out what food trucks were over at Center of the Universe that evening. Would’ve been nice.

On our way over there, we got stuck in a little stop-and-go rush hour traffic on I-95 crossing the James. Guy in front of me stops. I stop. Three seconds or so later, the person behind me doesn’t.

Yep, got rear-ended by somebody in a late model Izuzu truck doing 35. Knocked us forward a few feet, did this to the car:

Before we go any further – don’t worry, we’re all okay. No injuries whatsoever to living things. The back of the car soaked it up pretty well.

We had the insurance company on the phone and the claim filed before the cops even go there, which took a while, because, you know, rush hour. What sucked is that given that we were on a bridge over the river, there wasn’t much of a shoulder to pull onto. Did I mention it was raining? I got soaked while waiting for the cop, waving cars around our lane. Eventually, the police and a highway safety truck escorted us off the bridge (both cars were more-or-less drivable) and onto the shoulder on land near the Broad Street exit (special thanks to our friend Bert who saw us on the shoulder and stopped by to check to see if we were okay). After a statements and whatnot were taken, I was free to go – the other driver got cited for “following too closely”, and the police report will be filed in another day or so.

So, we limped the car home, nervous about the bright red airbag light (they didn’t deploy in the crash, but every little bump in the road on the way home was nerve-wracking), then proceeded to have some dinner and some drinks to calm our nerves. It was kind of like an Irish Wake, you might say.

After surveying the damage a bit, I kind of came to the “totaled” conclusion, and ended up having conversations with both my insurance company and the other guy’s yesterday – We spent the Fourth hanging out with friends at a couple of different backyard bbqs, telling the story several times to various acquaintances.

Today, my insurance company’s guy came by to take a look – he didn’t even bother working up a repair estimate. According to my guys, it’s not worth fixing. He did give the car a nice and fair appraisal. The other guy – the one who’ll be paying – is coming on Monday – if all is professional and decent, his assessment will match my guy’s, and his assessment will fall within a few bucks of the first, and they can get around to cutting me a check.

The whole situation makes me really sad. I loved this car. Probably the best car I’ve ever owned. Seven years, almost 97k miles, and nary a problem at all. I was looking forward to another 100k with this fun,economical car. Plus, I can’t actually get another one – they stopped making them when Pontiac went under, and they’re not making it’s Toyota sibling the Matrix any longer either. But, suspecting that this was gonna be a total write-off, I did a little research and preliminary shopping activities.

On Thursday on the way to our first bbq, I swung by the Toyota dealership, and took a look at the Yaris (in fact, the one I’m looking at is identical to the top picture you’ll see if you click the link) – it’s basically my dear departed car, only ten percent smaller. Most of the bits I liked about my car so much were the Toyota bits, so I figured it was a good spot to start. I wanted to get a look at things, and see if scaling down a little bit would be too uncomfortable. Having talked to a sales guy a bit, I got a look at one and found I fit in just fine. On Friday, I went over to test drive it, and really liked it. My tastes run toward these tiny nimble hatchbacks, as you know, and this little guy fits the bill, and is much more interesting than the other cars in the segment (The Honda Fit, a couple of Kias and Hundais, that new Chevy thing). I suspect that, if all goes well with the second insurance estimate/appraisal, and the other guy’s insurance doesn’t play any games or drag their feet, I’ll be driving one by the middle of next week.

So, anyway, that’s what’s been going on in my life the last couple of days. Hope yours has been better. Hopefully the flinching whenever someone comes up behind me while I’m driving will stop soon.