Aaron Thies

Friday afternoon my wife and I took our car in to check out an strange noise from the the front passenger side.  They told us it was bad.  The brake caliper had broken, unusual, but since our car is from out of state (Buffalo, NY) we had a lot of corrosion due to the salt the East Coasters lay down to melt the ice.  The problem with corrosion is adjacent parts meld together, so removing one part and force you to remove another, and another.  We left with low spirits.  Using our iPhone we found a Nissan dealer down the road.  After a call, they were closing (it was 4:45pm), but gave us the name of another place nearby.  Again to the iPhone to find this place.  They were closing, but could look at it at 8am Saturday.  We continued driving another mile to reach this place and leave the car.  That squared away, we again used the iPhone to find a car rental place.  Bingo, a mile down the road was a Hertz.  Humourously enough while walking to Hertz we passed an Enterprise office, which is more expensive, and we would have stopped at if he had not known about the Hertz.  The Hertz line was surprisingly long for a Friday at 5:45, but they had a vehicle for us.  It cost us an hour, but our weekend was salvage in large part to the iPhone.  BTW, our car was fixed by 2pm Saturday

A small additional thought.  I was recently at the DMV to obtain a CA driver’s license and register my car in CA.  I have hear several proposals for why you do not need a car for the benefit of the environment.  How about getting rid of your car for your own sanity; no longer having to deal with the DMV?