Okay, my car stuff is all up to date. My experience with the Maryland State Police was less than ideal. First, I was waiting out there for a long time, so I finally called back. Sure enough, the first dispatcher I had spoke with was rushed and hadn’t taken information she was supposed to - like my phone number. The second dispatcher confirmed that someone had gone out looking for me but hadn’t driven down I-270 far enough, so they had turned back. When he finally got there, he was able to yank the part off the car (turns out it is called the “lower air deflector”) and he also asked to see my license. He brought it back to his vehicle and ran it - this was before he messed with my car, so I assume it’s standard procedure - and when he came back to me he asked if that was my car. I told him no, it’s my spouse’s, and he asked to see the registration. I pulled it out and he said “whose car did you say this was?” I said “well, my partner’s.” He got it after that, and said “oh, like your girlfriend’s, your wife’s.” He pointed to the address on the registration and said “you live here?” (He had already handed me back my license.) I said I did, and he thanked me and I was on my way again.

I drove straight to Saturn in Fairfax, where I was told they couldn’t do anything for me today. I thought I was going to have to take tomorrow off to get it fixed, but it turned out we could borrow my in-laws’ car so that was okay. But the guy at Saturn was utterly useless - he was totally non-committal when I asked about whether or not I needed to get this fixed right away. So I was planning to drop it back off tonight, but thanks to comments and e-mails from missakins, kg4yef, and others I was able to determine that this really isn’t particularly vital. I called Saturn and got to speak to the other guy in the service department, who confirmed that it wasn’t really necessary to fix that part at this time of year. It pulls air up into the radiator to help keep the engine temperature down, so I will need to get it fixed by next summer, but he said the chances of anything happening now are slim. Whew!

I took the car to Jiffy Lube for its regular service (this was on my schedule for today all along), and I asked the guy about the air deflector. He said it was basically just a piece of plastic and not essential at all. So I’m feeling much better…at least I don’t have to get this fixed tomorrow. I asked the Jiffy Lube guy if I would be okay on road trips between now and when I get the air deflector fixed, and he said that as long as I wasn’t planning to drive over 200mph (!) I would be fine.