Our Dearly Departed Dimples

We are saddened to announce that on Jan 6^th, 2012 Dimples departed this earth, sloughed off this mortal coil and moved to a better place. Richard was leaving the temple in St. Louis and driving about 30 miles an hour when a big SUV failed to yield at a light and pulled out into oncoming traffic. It hit Richard going fast enough that the airbags deployed and he was pretty out of it for a few seconds.
He had fairly severe swelling and pain from the seatbelt and airbags, but otherwise was unhurt.  Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Dimples, whose front end/engine area was completely crushed.

 Thankfully a police officer was traveling thru the traffic light in the lane next to Richard, saw the whole thing, and quickly circled back. The other driver’s insurance is covering medical, totaling the car etc, But the really crappy thing about sharing the road with absolute ­­­morons (Seriously?! Failure to yield into oncoming traffic!?) is that more often than not you are the one that comes up with the short end of the stick. In this case, Richard was driving an old, rickety, 2000 Ford Escort, on the last legs of its life.  However, the keywords here are ‘was driving’, i.e. it RAN.  And finding a working car for what the insurance is likely to offer for dearly departed Dimples, well, that is probably beyond even my Craigslist Ninja abilities.  

So for all intents and purposes, the Goering family has been reduced to one car for all their travel needs, my sweet Betsy. And although we love her, we are deeply concerned that the old girl might not be up to the task. She is turning 20 this year, after all. But we are intensely grateful to Ken Goering for his recent rebuild of Betsy during her clutch replacement this summer, and the battery TLC over his Christmas visit. Because driving a car, even one that stops working at unpredictable times and whose speedometer has recently convinced itself we are always at ‘warp speed,’ (aka, alternatively -30 or 180 mph-when it isn't spinning like Wheel of Fortune) driving even this car, is still much, much better than walking.