Safelite To The Rescue

Some of you may recall that in a blog post during our trip out west, I reported that just as we were leaving El Paso, Texas, to cross into New Mexico, a small stone flew up and chipped the windshield in our Laramie pickup. I had planned to get it fixed while we were in the Phoenix area visiting Terry’s parents and sisters, but we were so busy that I never got around to it. When we went up to Show Low to be with our daughter Tiffany and her family, son-in-law Kenny recommended a mobile repair place, but it being the Memorial Day weekend, scheduling was a problem.

So we decided to wait and get it taken care of when we got home. As it turned out, on our last day in Show Low, another rock hit the upper right corner of the windshield and cracked it. Before we could even blink, that crack became several cracks and start spreading.

A couple of days ago, I called Safelite Auto Glass and they scheduled a repair tech to come to the house yesterday between noon and 5 PM. Right at noon the tech, a very nice young man named Christopher, called to say he was on his way and would be here within about 25 minutes. True to his word, he was here right on time and put the new windshield on a cart, ready to install.

I asked if I could hang around and watch so I would have blog fodder, and Christopher had no problem with that. It didn’t take him long to take out the broken windshield and attach a couple of big suction cups to the side glass of the truck to hold the new windshield in place during installation.

Miss Terry ran a commercial glass shop for many years, doing everything from storefronts to auto glass, and she is the first to admit that the business has changed a lot since she hung up her tools. Back then, it only took her a few minutes to swap out a windshield, even on a big snow plow truck. But these days windshields aren’t just windshields. They have built-in sensors for everything from the windshield wipers during rain and mist to emergency stop features for accident avoidance and headlight dimmers for oncoming traffic. This plastic gizmo on the new windshield is part of that system, and then it attaches to receivers mounted above the windshield inside the truck’s cab.

In no time at all Christopher had the old windshield out and the new one installed. But it’s not quite that simple these days. Using a tablet computer, he had to recalibrate all of those sensors in the windshield, then take the truck for a short drive to make sure everything was working right. Apparently it was because he was back soon and said we were all ready to go.

Thanks for a quick, excellent job, Christopher. I’ll make it a point of telling your office what a great job you did and how professional you were while you were here.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is both books in my Highway History and Back Road Mystery series, featuring oddball little stories we picked up in our travels across America as fulltime RVers, both books personally autographed to the winner.

To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Babies recognize their mother’s voice in the womb so they can selectively block it out when they become teenagers.