We don’t have a garage. As a matter of fact, we’ve never had a garage. Our first home (less than 900 square feet) had no covering at all for vehicles. In a way this worked out for the best since Kenn’s little rattletrap truck sacrificed itself and took most of the of the damage when a huge section of the tree in our front yard fell; the poor little truck was severely dented but it kept the house from taking more damage than it did. Our second house, built in 1962, had a 60’s style carport ringed with wrought iron. The carport was just big enough for my Toyota Highlander as long as we opened the doors carefully in order to avoid hitting the wrought iron on the left side or the brick wall on the right.

Fast forward to our current house, also known as The Cabin. The Cabin has a stand-alone covered carport big enough for both vehicles – or at least it was until we bought Ruby. I think we were on the way home from the dealership when Kenn expressed concern that Ruby wouldn’t fit in the carport. I, on the other hand, was confident she would and, I was right. Ruby fit but we had to take care not to clip the side mirrors on the support posts. Then Kenn replaced the factory mirrors with ones we could extend when towing the travel trailer. These wider mirrors narrowed the room for error when parking Ruby significantly. We learned to be extremely careful both when parking and backing out and we’ve both had our share of close calls. Sadly, our luck ran out this past weekend.

Of course, we were both a little upset (especially Kenn, since he was driving). However, we both knew it was just a matter of time until this happened although it would have been nice if it had taken longer than 5 months, LOL. I told Kenn that we need to make sure the replacement mirrors fold up so we can just close them up before parking to eliminate this problem in the future. But, you want to know the worst part? The existing soon-to-be-replaced mirrors also folded up. It just never dawned on either of us to actually fold them up in order to eliminate the parking problem. It was a true facepalm moment.

One of the good things about life is that we never stop learning. Sometimes the lessons we learn are hard ones, others not so much. This one is definitely in the latter category. A broken sideview mirror is an incovenience and replacing it is a bit of an expense but, in the long run, it’s no big deal. But, you can rest assured that we will be folding Ruby’s mirrors up in the future!

Until next time, happy trails and watch your mirrors!