Here's to Hail..

@$&*%^@*
That's what I feel like saying to nature. What chance does a mere mortal like me stand against nature's wrath?? Or for that matter what chance does my car have against it?

Last Tuesday, I walk into my company gym for my usual workout at about 5.30 in the evening. There were a few people in the gym. I headed to the locker room to change. While I was changing, I suddenly heard sounds from the ceiling. It felt like a few people were walking on the false roofing above the gym.. In a couple of seconds it turned to a deafening roar.. I rushed out of the locker room into the main workout area and I couldn't find anyone.. I turned a corner and found everyone lined up near the windows overlooking the car park. A few of them even had their hands on their heads.. I rushed to the window too and I exclaimed something to the effect of "Holy Mother of God!".
We were in the middle of a hail storm... MILLIONS of golf-ball sized ice blocks were pummeling the place. The ground seemed to explode with the force of so many solid pieces blasting down on it. It reminded me of a scene from the "Band of Brothers", where the American soldiers were entrenched in the siege of Bastone and the Germans were shelling them with mortar and trees were exploding all around them. This was on a smaller scale ofcourse. I could see thin branches of trees literally exploding under the impact of the constant hail bombardment.
And then it struck me! My car was out there in the car park completely unprotected. And then I realized why a few people had their hands over their heads. The damage was going to be quite a bit. I steeled myself and went ahead with my work out. Later when I inspected my poor baby, I found quite a few hail dents :-(. Somewhere close to 20 dents. One of my rear tail lights was broken. Hail had peppered the car from one side. It almost looked like someone took a shot at my car with a giant shotgun from the sky with one of those spread bullets. It was going to be a field day for the mechanics and body shops around Boulder, I thought.
The next day I went to get a damage assessment done and I was shocked out of my wits. It was going to cost me 2600$ to get those damages fixed. The body shop guy told me that they would have to put in (only) about 7-8 hours of work on my car and it would be back to ship-shape. Holy macaroni.. If I'd known that body shops and mechanics earn so much in the US.. heck, I'd have done my masters to become one of them.
I turned in my car on Tuesday and I've been driving a rented Ford Focus for the last couple of days. If the Focus is any representation of American cars, NO WONDER they're not making any money. Heck, I'm sure if there were bicycle pedals under the drivers seat in the car, I could've made it move faster. What a load of crap!!
After two days of 'Focus'sed torture, I finally got a call from the body shop saying that they finished their work on my car one day early and I could pick it up today if I wanted. I immediately rushed to the shop and inspected my baby. WHAT a beauty.. they had done a good job on it and it was all shiny and sparkling. I never realized how much I had become attached to my car.
After handing over my insurance deductible (thank god for insurance), I proudly zoomed out of the body shop like Batman streaks out of the BatCave on his BatMobile. I worked the entire 220 horses under the hood all the way to the next traffic lights. One flick and I had the Bose system pumping out some Metallica into the entire neighborhood. Now, that felt.. complete. A man.. his machine.. and his Bose. An epic symphony!