Driving in Cars... All by myself

My brake lights burned out.

I learned this as I was driving down the canyon from a BEAUTIFUL afternoon of skiing. The car behind me signaled for me to pull over, at which point a cute little ski bunny poked her head out the window and said in a slightly annoyed manner "Your brake lights don't work!"

I had my brother in law check them out for me shortly there after, and sure enough: gone, all except the small light in the rear window.

I recognize FULLY that brake lights in the canyon are pretty important for everyone's safety... but I'm a bit boggled about how I'm supposed to proactivly know that those lights are going to go out. Even if I did a daily car safety check, I can't be sitting in the car pushing on the brakes and looking at the brake lights at the same time.

So, I added that item to my list of things to do, with the gracious offer of help from my brother in law and father.

Before that item got to the "done" list, a highway patrolman decided that he needed to let me know that my brake lights were out. At this point it was starting to cause me quite a bit of stress. I had too much to do, and figuring out how to change those light bulbs out, and the anxiety of a deeper maintenance issue was making me crazy.

I turned the task over completely to my dad, who was having a busy day as well. He found the replacement lights, and I was going to meet him late last night to figure out how to put them in.

Talk about feeling foolish: when I started poking around in the trunk, the access to the lights was a VELCRO DOOR and simply pulling the old bulb out and putting the new one in. The current must have been blocked by the burned out bulb, which caused all of the tail lights to stop working. Once the new bulbs were in, everything worked beautifully!

I was so caught up in the small "have to get this done" issue of the lights, that it overwhelmed me.