Car woes

We witnessed another wreck today. I barely saw it as it was happening, but Geoff noticed it before it happened. We approached a yellow light turning red, and slowed to a stop, but a young girl in the car next to us didn't even slow down - she ran right through the light, and crashed - loud and hard - right into the passenger side of a car coming the opposite direction and turning left. The guy who got hit did a complete 360 and went back over the median and hit some more cars that were waiting to turn left, and the girl that was next to us flipped around too and pulled to the opposite corner of the intersection - rather close to us, but we were untouched. Her front end was completely smashed and all this liquid started flowing out. The poor girl was in shock, all white and scared. Nobody got hurt though. Lots of people called 911 including Geoff, and we pulled over and waited, wondering if we should give a statement. We stood there for awhile and the cops and ambulences came and we kept waiting and eventually decided that there were enough other witnesses still there and we left. (I hope that's not illegal!) Anyway, we were super careful driving around after that, having been reminded of how easy it is to wreck.

The other car woe of the day. A couple of days ago Geoff took his car in for new tires, and found out that his alignment was way out of wack and that was why his tires wore down so quickly, so he had that fixed too. I started wondering if my alignment was out also, because the car does shake when going freeway speeds. So I took my car to Les Schwab for a free tire-rotation (a perk for buying your tires there) and asked them to check the alignment too, and fix it if it needed to be fixed. They called an hour later and said I needed new wheel bearings, and they needed to replace the wheel bearings before they could fix the alignment. This of course, would take the bill from $86 to $475. I know absolutely nothing about this sort of thing, other than you can't trust car repair places, so I said no, and forget the alignment too, we'd be by to pick the car up in a minute.

I called my super-awesome little brother who is studying to be a diesel mechanic and has been working on cars for years, and asked him if they tried to swindle us. Absolutely yes, was his answer. Wheel bearings and alignment have nothing to do with each other, and if the wheel bearings are feeling wobbly, they just need to be re-packed and tightened. It's still a foreign language to me, but he said he could repack the wheel bearings if they are indeed loose. He recommended an honest guy he knows who could check the alignment for me.

Super-awesome little brother: 2
Les Schwab criminals: 0

(The two is from when he cleaned my brakes a couple months ago and let me know they are in good shape.) Actually, let's give him all the points he wants because he is super-awesome, after all.