No deductible!!!

It's 6AM Monday morning Lake Como time. Joan and I left Phoenix Wednesday morning .  The time is flying by but the last five days have been exhilarating, exciting, frustrating and a little bit irritating! Let me explain. Normally we would fly to Milan, pick up our rental car and then head for the rental house in Mezzegra on the shore of Lake Como.  This is our fifth year out of six that we have done this.   This year, however, we chose to replace Joan's seven year old car with a new BMW and took advantage of the European delivery program.  This is offered by BMW through one's local dealership. It couples a significant discount with the ability to do away with the rental fee of a vehicle during our stay.

Instead of flying into Milan we went straight to Munich for the factory pick up. All went according to plan and we met Tiarra, our daughter in law and BMW enthusiast (she drives an M3) in Atlanta and left a few hours later. After a free day in Munich and a great meal at a recommended restaurant we got a good night's sleep and arrived at the factory, museum and delivery center at 8AM. Friday morning. Folks who take a factory delivery are treated like royalty and everything is absolutely first class!  (See pictures) After the tour and a stroll through the museum we were on our way for the 300 mile drive to Lake Como.

This is the point where my concerns and fears were soon to be realized!  In one of my not so brilliant moments I decided that we would avoid the autobahn as much as possible and take the scenic route. Although magnificent views were seen at every turn the roads themselves were tight, tight, tight!

I should preface this by telling you as part of the purchase price an insurance policy with zero deductible is included in the price.  Very, very important, especially the part with zero deductible.

Coming into a small town with very narrow streets a low curb made from solid granite reached out to our car and gouged out a chunk of our aluminum front right wheel.  The crunching noise was unmistakable and I instantly knew I had done some damage.  I kept my cool but pulled over to check it out. Yes, just as I suspected.  I "broke" the car in before we had driven 100 miles!   Oh well, we just continued on our way.  We ended up overnighting in a beautiful Austrian ski town, St. Anton.  We got up on Saturday morning for the continuation of our journey to the lake.  We had already been to Germany, Austria and were soon to pass through Liechtenstein, and Switzerland and finally into Italy.

Decision time:  do we stay on the autobahn or take the incredible scenic route over the Splugenpass, saving about 35 miles.  The fateful decision:  Splugenpass. I had driven this route twice before but Joan and Tiarra had never been on it and I thought they would enjoy the experience. Not a good idea!  Our car is the 750 li model meaning it is very long.  All was well for a while but the turns were being negotiated as slow as 3MPH to accommodate the car, the traffic and comfort. This road is one of the engineering marvels of the word. You wonder why they even bothered but it was built before the Swiss and Italians decided to bore 10 mile long tunnels bypassing the treacherous Alps. We were negotiating the turns quite well until we had to come to a complete stop and wait for an oncoming car on the mother of all hairpins!  We were going down hill and as I turned hard right the right rear tire and wheel dropped off the pavement and the rear bumper bottomed out on the very rough and rocky ground. A good hard scrape!! We checked it out a little later and found that I had scraped off about one square foot of the underside of the bumper.  We needed to get on our hands and knees to see it (not viable from any other position) but still plenty irritating.  Because of the insurance policy the car will be checked over very carefully and fully repaired at no cost to us.  It still looks beautiful and no damage can be seen, except for the wheel if you look very carefully.  Joan and Tiarra continually reminded me that we could have been cruising comfortably along the autobahn, but no, Mr. Macho man needed to attack the Spugenpass.  It is safe to assume I have seen this road for the last time.

Our "villa" overlooking the lake is in fine shape and we are really looking forward to our six week stay. On Sunday morningTiarra and I drove out  to the Milan airport and picked up her friend, Shalei Webb and she will also be spending this week with us.  We look forward to a good time and a lot of trouble free driving.