Inspection

What a weekend.

Saturday morning I got up and drove into Roanoke. It had been eight months since my last visit to the old hometown. In that time, my car's inspection sticker had expired. In fact, it expired back in February. Better late than never, right? Sure, it's six months late, but I have a good reason.

I knew that there were a few issues with my car. I knew that there were problems that would cause Jade not to pass this year's inspection. And I knew that these issues would cost me more money than I could afford in order to have them fixed. So I put off entering the Commonwealth of Virginia for as long as I thought I could. But this weekend, the time finally came.

I arrived too late to have the car looked at on Saturday. Thankfully, I had asked to have Monday off from work, so that gave me all day today to get Jade taken care of. But there was some hesitation. After running down a list of problems (that I knew of), I decided there was no way I could afford to go through with the inspection. So I very nearly talked myself into skipping the inspection and just pressing my luck by returning to North Carolina. My plan was to then drive my car for as long as I possibly could.

But Jerry, my step-father, determined that the problem with my noisy exhaust could be fixed for under a hundred dollars. My grandmother had said that she would be willing to help me out with that. And from there, I decided that kind of amount would be easy to pay back. So this morning I dropped the car off at a dependable garage and had them perform the inspection and the repair that we knew was needed.

Around 10:30 this morning I got a call. There were more issues that needed to be fixed in order for Jade to pass her inspection. This brought the estimated grand total to $620. I wanted to cry.

I didn't really want to cry. But I did regret taking the car to the garage at all. By this point I was thinking I should have just cut my losses and gotten the heck outta Dodge. But Mamaw still said she'd be willing to help me out. If she's reading this, I say thank you once again and I promise I will pay you back as soon as I am able. Even if it's just a little at a time, that $622 and change will be back to you.

There were some other events that occurred during my time in Roanoke. I had dinner on Saturday with my old roommate Brandon and a mutual Bluefield friend, Teresa (known henceforth as Tree). Neither of us had seen Tree in a couple years, so it was a nice get together. Brandon convinced me to come back to his house, then he and his wife convinced me to stay the night. So we stayed up late playing Punch-Out. Always good times.

Sunday after church I had lunch with the members of my family that were able to be there. It was good to see my great-grandmother and aunt while I was in town. After a late lunch I headed back to Brandon and Kara's where we got together with our other former college roommate, Mark. The four of us went to Putt-Putt, and though I did the absolute worst of all of us, I did manage to get a hole-in-one. And the blue light was on, so I got to trade my ball in for an orange one. That was always exciting as a kid.

After the miniature golf outing, we convinced Mark to call a friend of his who had just moved to Roanoke. Jessica is a girl that we had all heard Mark talk about for a while but none of us had ever met her. Turns out, she's a fan of the Carp Dime. So see there? If you're a blog reader and you let me know it when we meet, you get a shout out the very next day.

Despite the stress of car repairs, it was a good trip to the 'Noke. And the car runs like a dream now. Maybe not a dream, but it runs. And it isn't deafening when I push the gas pedal.