window/door

Last Tuesday, as we were driving in Yellowstone Park, it started to rain. I rolled up my window, and when the window got to the top, it went straight back down. I rolled it up again, and it went up and then straight back down.

I looked over at S., who had her hand on the driver's side all-powerful window controls. "Hey!" I said, "Stop rolling my window down! It's raining!"

"Dude, I'm not touching your window," she said.

I turned back to my window, and rolled it up more slowly, bit by bit. When it reached the top, there was a horrible crunching sound.

The problem with the horrible crunching sound, more than just the horrible crunching, was that we were driving S.'s mom's car. She offered, and her car has air-conditioning, and it was 100+ degrees the day we left, and her car has airbags, and I persuaded S. that we should take her up on it since S.'s car is a little tin can and, as we all know, I fear cars. Not cars. I fear accidents. Between cars, with people in them.

If we had been in S.'s crappy little car, the horrible crunching sound would have been a little problem. I'm pretty sure anything on that old Sentra can be fixed for under $50. Not so much on the new Passat.

I cautiously pushed the button the other way to roll the window down, just to inspect the damage.

And the window fell down into the door.

Gone.

I peered down into the door, but there was nothing to be seen. I was at least relieved to realize that what I saw of the window as it disappeared seemed to have been in one piece.

I should note that it was still raining. Harder and harder. As soon as we could pull into a parking space, I grabbed my towel from the back seat, opened the door, and looped the towel up over the top of the door. Fortunately, the door could still close with a towel in it.

All day, we just hoped for clear skies and left the car wide open at the Mud Volcano, at the Lower Falls, at Old Faithful. When it got cold and S. rolled her window up, I said, "Yeah, yeah. Your window rolls up. Show-off."

It started raining again as we left the park to drive to S.'s grandparents' house, so I put up the towel barrier again, holding it down with both hands to keep it from flapping in the wind. Rain still came pouring through the corner of the window, and I improvised by putting the hood of a raincoat through the handle above the door and holding that down, too. (Don't worry. There are photos.) A few cars were stopped on the side of the road ahead of us. S. stopped our car and, peering out from behind the towel and raincoat, we saw, thirty or so feet away, just on the hill going up into the forest, a grizzly bear on all fours, staring straight at us.

The fact of a large grizzly bear mere meters away barely had time to register in my head before S. was speeding away. "That bear looked pissed off," she said. "Bears are fast. And our window doesn't close. Because it has fallen into the door." (We laughed every time we said that, about the window. It never got un-funny.)

Back at S.'s grandparents, we affixed duct tape to a long screwdriver and managed to pull the window out of the door. We duct-taped over the top of the door and on the side, and called it sufficient. It got us thirteen hours home, with a lot of extra road noise. "Don't look at us like this has never happened to you," I said every time someone glanced at our inelegant tape job on the way home. "You know you wish you had duct tape on your passenger window. All the cool kids do."

Word on the street is that this is a very common VW problem. Happens to everyone, sooner or later. The response from the VW dealership was something like, "[sigh] We know." S. and I offered to pay for the repair, between nearly falling over with laughter about the window falling into the door, but doubtful will that be needed. Her mom was allegedly just grateful to have it back cleaner than it's been since it came off the lot. Allegedly. Which is a position for which I am deeply grateful.