Making Due

One dreary morning a few weeks ago, I got up and stumbled (if one can stumble while driving) over the DC's Half Street inspection station to get my car inspected, as was required by DC law. Other state, like Virginia, license various gas stations to inspect cars. But not DC. One and all must make their way to Half Street where you exit your car and walk through an adjacent building where windows allow you to watch as your car goes down the line, being subjected to various tests.

I chose a 6:15 am slot because the lines were allegedly shorter then and I didn't see how I'd fit it in during the day, what with work and all. The attendant who came to inspect my car chided me for being less than awake, as if we all should be bright-eyed at that hour. He was at work. I was not.

I'd recently had an oil change and gotten my brakes checked, so I felt confident about my car's ability to pass inspection...and yet it did not. Why? Because of a damaged windshield wiper blade. On Facebook, a friend would later point out that DC road are filled with cars that lack doors and radiators, yet mine failed because of the wiper blade.

This joke later served as a kind of prediction when I learned that to trim the budget DC had nixed the inspections all together. Now people really can drive around in cars held together by rubber bands because the city will not be regulating this aspect of their lives.

I got the new wiper blade in anticipation of returning for the follow-up inspection before learning that the inspections were ending. Since I tend to get philosophical about every and anything, so I try to look at it as a call to go for a higher standard. I'd been making do with that wiper blade for so long, I didn't notice it anymore.