Jinxed (again)

My sister informed me that I've already used the Jinxed title (for a blog similar to this one actually), but it will have to do, because it's what is appropriate.

I have a bad history with the red Jeep Wrangler that my parents bought when we found out we were moving to Mammoth, CA (which gets a lot of snow). I thought I'd share that history tonight, but it turned out a lot longer than expected, I'll understand if you don't get to read the whole thing in one sitting.

When I was 15 my parents decided to teach me how to drive using my oldest brother's first car, a Subaru Brat. While it was probably a cool car in 1986, wasn't exactly what I had in mind in 1996. Additionally, the clutch on that car was REALLY hard to use. Eventually my parents decided that I could drive the Jeep which has a really forgiving clutch. I took the Jeep down to Bishop for my driving test and didn't pass. I blame it on the car. The seats in the car were broken (they leaned towards the center) and the examiner told me that when we first left the parking lot I drove on the wrong side of the street. I still don't believe her and think that she just had a weird view from that broken seat. I re-took the exam in Misty's car a week later and did fine.
While no car is perfect in the snow, and the Jeep is better than most, I had a few run-ins with ice and a few experiences with doing 360s in the middle of the street. Fortunately no accidents came from those. The first accident I had in Mammoth involved a handicap pole. My parents were away for the weekend so I stopped at the post office to get the mail. It was really cold and snow pretty hard so I rushed back to the car after getting the mail and took off. Unfortunately I didn't see the pole that holds up the handicap placard and I ran right into it denting the area in front of the drivers side door and leaving the red jeep with a bright blue mark on it.
My next incident came my freshman year of college. I pleaded with my parents to let me have a car (it sucks living in LA without one) and after Christmas they told me I could take the Jeep. My dad had it checked out by the local mechanics, I loaded up my stuff, and headed down to school. The car felt a little funny right off the bat, but I just let it go. Later on in the drive I wondered whether my tire was low on air because it was wobbling/making a funny noise. By the time I got to L.A. it was a lot worse. I didn't want to stop since I was so close to home so I just drove real slow. I was going about 40mph on a 8 lane freeway when all of a sudden the left rear wheel just came off the car. Not the tire, the ENTIRE WHEEL. I immediately pulled off on the side of the road and luckily didn't have any damage. I don't know where the wheel went. We didn't have cell phones at the time so I hitched a ride to a gas station and used a pay phone to call AAA and my parents. The AAA guy put the spare tire on (I found an old lost wallet hidden in the spare) and I drove home. Pretty impressive for a 17 year old, huh?
On to my sophomore year... it was my 18th birthday and my friend Erica decided to take me to Hollywood with her. She had a rich friend who paid off the bouncers at a popular celebrity hang-out, so we got in without showing any IDs (the only celebrity that night was David Schwimmer). This guy that Erica liked also came with us. Since it was my birthday he offered to drive the Jeep back to campus so that Erica and I could have cocktails. It was actually a really boring place and everything was really expensive so we didn't stay too long. On our way home we were going 95mph on the freeway which made me really nervous because that's as fast as the Jeep can go. I told the guy to slow down, but it was too late. He tells me that somethings really wrong with the car and starts over toward the shoulder. He looks under the hood and says, "oh, this is only a four cylinder? My jeep has 5." I didn't know what that meant, but we couldn't get the car to start, so we called AAA and got it towed back to campus and later down to my parents house. Come to find out that the engine had seized which is a pretty expensive fix. The combo of letting this guy drive so fast with low oil was pretty dumb.
Next was another mechanical issue. It was still my sophomore year and the Jeep started doing this really weird thing where it would just shake, A LOT. I would be driving down the road and the car would start vibrating like it was going to just fall apart. Sometimes it would only last a second and other times it would go on for a while. It scared everyone I drove and I couldn't figure out what caused it or how to stop it. My dad took it in and the first time they couldn't find anything wrong because it didn't shake for them. Eventually they fixed the problem, but those were a few scary months.
Next, I think it was still sophomore year. I drove to Westwood with my friends Erica and Tom to meet up with some other friends for sushi. Before we went home, Erica picked up a few groceries a local market so there were three of us and all these groceries in the Jeep. We left sometime after dark and got on the freeway. I had just merged into traffic when a car a little ways ahead of me went from the #2 lane onto the shoulder. The car in front of me slammed on their brakes and I slammed on mine. It didn't work and I hit him going about 20mph and the whole front of the Jeep just crumpled. Then the person behind me hit me, but not very hard, and so on until there were 6 cars on the side of the road. The car that caused all the trouble took off and so did the sedan that was in front of me (maybe they were illegal?) One of Erica's friends picked us up, but we had to leave the groceries behind. The car ended up being totaled, but we kept it and my dad bought a new engine and hood and I was driving it again my junior year.
Next it was October of 2000 and some of my friends wanted to go to this Octoberfest in Palos Verde. I offered to drive since I wasn't 21 and didn't think this was the proper place for a fake ID. We had a good time and left around 9pm. I didn't know the area very well and when I went to get on the freeway I was looking for the signs and I ended up turning right in front of this Mazda sedan. He hit my right rear wheel and just scuffed the hub-cap, but his car was dinged up pretty good. The guy and his wife were on a way to a party and were pretty mad about the whole thing, but we just exchanged info and went on our way.
I've had a few other mishaps in other cars - getting hit from the side in the Cabrio and spinning 180 degrees by a car going backwards, poor parallel parking that took the bumper off the Passat, and then hitting my friend in Williamsburg and breaking a tail-light of the Passat, but the Jeep has really been bad luck for me.
My latest mishap occurred on my way home from a field trip up to Bishop, CA. I had had a horrible night's sleep and was anxious to get home. I left the Jeep in Long Beach so all I had to do was drive home from there, but I ended up giving another classmate a ride to his apartment in Anaheim. I'm not all that familiar with Anaheim so after dropping him off I called my dad to get directions. He told me to take the 22W to the 5S. Easy enough. I got on the 22W and was taking the transition to the 5S when traffic just stopped. I was looking at the signs at the time and I had hair in my face since the Jeep has no roof or doors, so my reaction time was a little off. I slammed on my breaks going about 30mph with a few car lengths between me and the car in front of me. I thought I would stop in time so I didn't even try to pull off to the shoulder to give myself more room. I was wrong. When I realized that I wasn't stopping I started turning the wheel, but it was too late. My front left bumper crashed into the right rear bumper of the SUV in front of me. At first glance it didn't look like it did any damage, but then I saw the ding in the SUV's bumper. We both pulled off to the side. It was probably the calmest I'd ever been in an accident (now that I have experience with them). We exchanged info and as I was walking back to my car I noticed a ding in her trunk door too. Small amount of damage doesn't exactly equal small amount of money when it comes to cars. I was bummed. I don't really tailgate and I backseat drive when Kurt tailgates, but this stuff still happens to ME! I'm definitely jinxed.

The end.