'Tis true. Oh, nothing medical - I am in fine health these days.


I drive a boring and generally reliable Nissan Sentra. We've had this car since 2015. It's fully paid off, and now has about 108.000 miles on it.

There have been some maintenance issues and computer issues over the last three years or so, but nothing unusual for a vehicle of this age. Until Wednesday.

I was working my other job, and was in the Medical Area of Boston. The car suddenly goes "kablooey", "thump" and "Scrape, Scrape, SCRAPE!" Getting out of my vehicle, the front wheels looked rather like this: \ __/ Not good.

Totally undriveable. AAA came to my rescue, and I actually needed a flatbed, as it was un-towable, too. Finding out it's going to be a nearly $2k repair...right at the end of the winter when the ol' accounts are looking pretty thin. (fortunately, we had an emergency fund, but that's now depleted.)

Ah, but how did I defeat death for the second time? To their credit, every person I interacted with during the entire affair asked me the same questions. "Are you OK?" "How fast were you going?"

The PVC joint, ball valve, and shock tower all let go, likely due to unknown pothole damage on Boston's notorious streets. The man at my garage said, had I been going 25 mph, I would have hooked into a guardrail, or into oncoming traffic. At highway speed, we would have been talking cartwheels.

I was in a parking lot making a U-turn, going no more than 3 mph. Other than the failed parts, there was no body damage, nothing bent, and not even a new scratch on the paint.

Lucky days, indeed.