When it’s winter in Wisconsin, cars get dirty. Sometimes, they get egged, like ours did this weekend. Even though our lower-gas-mileage car is a $1000 junker,  whose speakers vibrate, pools water in the backseat floor, doors stick, air doesn’t work, dents all over… it is good to get it washed every now and then.

The first car wash I stopped at had two lines. I went to the line in the second bay, waiting for ten minutes to reach the front of the line. Eager to take my turn, I put the money in the machine and 1 dollar short of my depositing the total, a man asks if I put money in it already.

“Yes, I did.”

“It doesn’t work,” He tells me, walking away to find change for a refund.

Irritated at the lag in communication, instead of going to the first line at the car wash, I left the place entirely.

I went to a PDQ not far away. Paid $7 for the wash. Pulled my tire into the conveyer belt and put it in netural (I’ve never been to a conveyer belt car wash before).

The wash was no longer than a minute, including the drying time. Spray, flob-blob beating the windows, colored streams of silly-string lookalike, blob-flob, dry, done.

Huh? Egg, still intact on window, hood of car still wet (I HATED that I couldn’t roll out slowly by the jumbo dryers, getting the car nice and dry so I’m not driving an iciclemobile). $7 and sixty seconds later, I’m having buyer’s remorse.