Never let anyone tell you that you can't do something...On June 9th of last year, Georgina and I went kayaking on Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins, Colorado. After a fun day of kayaking, while I was loading the kayaks onto the roof of the Jeep, I accidentally bumped the kayak that was already loaded with the other one and it fell off the other side. It made a plastic drum like sound as it bounced off the asphalt in the parking lot, but I thought at the time that was about it. Wrong. I soon discovered that the kayak had clipped the drivers side mirror of the Jeep on the way down and it was hanging there like a broken branch of a tree. Not good.
At the time, it looked to me like the mirror had just popped out of place, but upon further review, one of the connecting posts got sheared off from the impact of the kayak. The rest of the mirror was fine and I figured maybe I could just glue it or something.
Well, it was then I began my quest to ask around and figure out what the best method was to fix my mirror. In the meantime, I affixed the mirror with duct tape, but it soon melted and peeled off, so I went searching for another solution.
The guy at the hardware store looked at me like I was crazy. I took him out into the parking lot to show him, but he was clueless. The guy at the hobby store literally ran me out of his store when I told him I needed some good glue to fix my mirror. He gasped "your automobile mirror, out you go, it can't be done". I visited a Jeep dealership where they have an auto body shop and they tried to sell me a new mirror for $475.00 instead. Say what? I had looked on-line and found a new mirror for like $30, but I was told my mirror was special and I needed the expensive one, and besides, they weren't going to put somebody else's part on for me. Nice.
The saga continued. The more I talked about it, the more people weighed in on the problem and told me it couldn't be done. That is until one of Georgina's friends at work told her husband and they graciously went out and bought me some form of industrial strength epoxy. I applied it to the mirror and pushed on it to hold it in place for like 15 minutes to let the epoxy set up. I let the Jeep sit 24 hours with a ladder under the mirror for support and by golly it worked. The electronics and everything were fine, until...
On August 10th, we had just finished a whitewater raft trip in Buena Vista, Colorado and were sitting in the Jeep at a Subway restaurant when a rather large woman got out of her car and without looking proceeded to bump into the mirror and once again render it dangling. This woman didn't even acknowledge her clumsiness or couldn't feel her accident due to her heft and went on her way leaving my mouth a gasp at this delusion of the gene pool. I then drove over 100 miles, over a mountain pass and everything, with that mirror hanging at a 90 degree angle, and made it back to Breckenridge, Colorado to fight another day.
The next morning, I knew what I had to do, go to a ski shop. These guys can fix anything. So, I went to a local ski shop and told them that they wouldn't see a problem like me all day and they helped me. They gave me some awesome epoxy they use for skis. I pushed on the mirror in the parking lot to hold it in place for like 15 minutes and it seemed to hold. Later that afternoon, I put it to the ultimate test and drove on the roughest 4-wheel drive road I have ever driven on, and it held. Yay.
Yay that is until last night...
Last night, in the comfort of my own garage, someone or something, maybe even Bigfoot, bumped into the mirror and this morning, I found it dangling once again. Mad, yes. Discouraged, a little. Defeated, never! As Rocky Balboa said to his manager in the movie "Rocky", "I ain't going down no more!"
That mirror will function again, you'll see. Until then, never let anyone tell you that you can't do something...
