The first day I had the Sweet Machine after the months of repair, I was stoked to say the least. She was truly a sweet machine and I loved her. I drove her to work with great pride.

I drove her to work without a hitch. After work, I hopped in with full confidence. Everything seemed normal, except for some reason University Avenue seemed so bumpy that day. And the weird thing was, it kept getting bumpier. With each stop, it got worse and worse. “Why is this street so bumpy today?” I asked myself repeatedly.

The best way to describe the feeling in the car is that only the front left quadrant of the car was going over terrain consisting of consecutively placed speed bumps and pot holes.

After sweating bullets, I miraculously made it to Jenn and Josh’s. When I got out of the car, the front driver’s side tire was at a 60-degree angle in relation to the ground.

When Josh came out to look at the car, he said, “Yeah, there are no bolts holding that tire on. There were only two when we got it and I broke one. I made sure that last one was on real tight, though. But that broke, too.”

These are the kinds of things I would’ve liked to have known before I risked my life getting into the car.

And yet I decided to risk my life yet again as Josh and I drove to Les Schwab. Josh drove behind me with his hazard lights on because mine, of course, didn’t work. Legal? Maybe not.

We got us some new bolts tightened to the right specs and The Sweet Machine and I were on our way again.