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Originally Posted by A455GTO
You win, awesome story!
Lets hear another, sure beats reading all the redundant political BS in the lobby  |
Hey, thanks! Well I do have another story worth telling, but it requires a bit of context.
I used to go to the City Club in downtown Detroit every weekend, faithfully, as long as I had $3 for the door fee and a quarter tank of gas. I had collected quite a few friends there, and EVERYONE knew my car. Combine the unique style of the '70 Catalina, banana colored, with enough rust holes you could call it Sponge Bob, it was clearly unmistakeable. Plus it was by far the biggest car in the parking lot.
I have to thank Michigan lawmakers for letting me drive my Pontiac. You see, in Michigan, we don't have vehicle inspections. They tried to do that one time, and all of a sudden half the people in the state couldn't drive to work anymore. So that didn't work and they dropped the issue.
So, of course, here I am still driving the Pontiac, two years later, on the tires that had already been slowly rotting away behind Nick's barn (see other post, $50 rustbucket.) Of course, anybody with half their wits would have stayed in this one particular weekend - about two feet of snow on the ground, and even the salt trucks were getting stuck. But, you see, I only had 25% of my wits, not half. So does Jim stay home? Not a chance. I hop in the Catalina, start it up, and off I go, after crashing thru the pile of snow at the foot of the driveway & valiantly sliding into some semblence of tracks in the road.
So I manage to get on the freeway, and here I am, slaloming down highway 10 into Detroit, doing everything I can to keep my car on the road. There's hardly anyone else on the freeway, so I figure I'm pretty safe. Then some lady in a Jeep starts tailgating me, flashes her lights a couple of times, then passes me on the right because I refused to go more than 65 in a 55 zone in 2 feet of snow. Go figure.
So anyhow, I let her by, I back off to about 55, watching her scoot away, fishtailing slightly here and there, showing off, whatever. It occurrs to me that a jeep isn't really ideal for that sort of stuff in the snow, but oh well, I let it go - that is, until I round the next corner and there she is, at a dead stop,
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREEWAY.
Now, keep in mind, I'm in nearly 2 tons of metal, on 4 tires that might as well be freshly waxed skis, and I'm pretty much staring this lady in the face as I approach at a pretty good clip.
It's amazing what one's mind goes thru when there's a clearly unavoidable accident about to happen in a matter of seconds. For those of you that have been in such a situation, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Your mind races a mile a minute, as if you've just bonged a gallon of Starbucks coffee. Well, at least, that's been my experience.
It occurred to me, in that time, that A) the front left fender was aimed directly at her driver's side door, B) that I had little or no traction whatsoever, and conclusively, C) This lady's life was in grave danger.
With approximately four seconds before impact, I did the best I could - I initiated a wipeout of my own, throwing the wheel left, and as the car began to bank a little to the left, whipped it to the right as far as possible, bringing my car into an agonizingly slow drift to the right. This was enough to twist my car in the snow such that the front left corner moved about two feet over to the right, impacting the rear of the jeep instead of crushing the driver's door and her body with it. This particular maneuver worked, but what couldn't be avoided was promptly ripping the jeep in half & sending her directly into the median.
-- The aftermath --
The jeep was careening somewhere off to my left, and for whatever reason, I glanced down at the speedometer out of morbid curiosity. I was still going a good 30mph post-impact. I continued my drift off to the right, correcting as best I could and coming to a stop on the right side of the freeway. My windshield was cracked, my glasses were somewhere on the dashboard, but I was otherwise OK.
I decided to get out and trudge over to her jeep, to see what the damage was. So I got out and began approaching her. The door was off, somewhere in the snow, and she was sort of hanging halfway out, her seatbelt still wrapped across her shoulders. She looked OK for the most part, quite dazed of course, but her forehead was bleeding quite badly, shards of glass all over the seat & floor, and I told her to try to keep my shirt pushed against her forehead & that she was going to be just fine.
Well not long after this the police came, saw me without a shirt on, standing in the snow, helping her hold the makeshift rag to her forehead, and then they took over. I ended up sitting in the back of the cruiser while they asked me a ton of questions. I started to freak out a little, asked if they were taking me off to jail or whatever, when the partner (driver was out handling the situation) said "In all my years of Detroit policework, I almost never see anyone think to act like you did. Going over and helping her like you did. Don't worry about a thing, kid.."
In fact, after the ambulance came and took her away, this guy pulled over to where my car was, dropped me off, and told me to sit in the car while he bent the fender out for me. So I sat, and this man got a 2-foot crowbar out of the back of his cruiser and proceeded to work for a good 5 or 10 minutes in the freezing cold getting the fender bent out enough so I could drive on. What a cool guy.
I didn't realize it then, and wouldn't until the next morning, but the impact with the jeep had thrown the frame back just enough so the harmonic balancer was now rubbing on the bottom crossmember. This led to some problems later on that night - involving lost belts and inner city thugs and acts of desperation on my part - but I'll save that story for later, I've already written a book today. *grin*
-Jim