It seems that there is a strange attractive force between concrete pillars such as one finds in car parks and my car. At least when I’m driving.
It wasn’t long after I had a parking space in London House (downtown Calgary) (which was an impressive achievement given the scarcity of parking spaces) that I managed to park too close the the concrete pillar that was at the left rear of my parking space. By doing so, I made it pretty much impossible to get out without scratching the paint on the driver’s side. And that wasn’t the only time I ended up doing the same thing in that space except the second time was quite a bit worse. Fortunately, in both cases, the damage was superficial and hasn’t caused any trouble over the past few years.
I’ve been pretty lucky over the intervening years; I haven’t managed to cause a lot of damage. However, today I did a real number on the passenger side this time. I was taking a right turn in the Chinook Mall parkade. Guess what was on the inside of that corner? Yup. A concrete pillar. I did a real number on things this time, although most of the damage looks to be superficial and probably won’t cause any real issues. There is a dent right behind the rear passenger door but it’s not serious; it looks like everything is still basically sound.
Now, I’ve managed to damage my paint job one other time, too. But that was because I wasn’t paying enough attention when disembarking from a the ferry headed from Victoria to Vancouver. And in that case, the damage was very minor.
So it seems if I want to keep my car from looking like it was part of a demolition derby, I should stay away from concrete pillars and ferries. Somehow, I don’t think that will happen.
Fortunately, I’m not the sort that gets their knickers in a twist over damage to their car. It still drives and the recent adventure doesn’t seem to have impaired the handling any so I guess I have nothing to worry about, really. Only thing is that now I need a car wash because the adventure removed a lot of dirt. And that is far more noticeable than the scrapes on the car. Oh well, such is life.