ON CLOSE CALLS
My dad had to drive to the airport Tuesday night. From their home, it is about an hour's drive on the highway, traveling at speeds greater than I would drive. After he pulled into his spot in the parking garage, he got out of the car and noticed a back wheel was seemingly askew. Putting it out of his mind, he went to meet my sister's husband at baggage claim.
They came back to the car and checked it out and sure enough, it seemed to be a serious problem. They decided to drive the car out of the parking garage so that it could be met by a tow truck. He backed the car out, and started driving...for about twenty feet, at which point the wheel fell off. [In my mind, it's very similar to the car breaking down in "The Blues Brothers" or "Road Trip."]
Eventually, they got help, jacked the car up, and moved one lugnut from each of the other wheels to the offending wheel, drove the car out of the garage, and then had it towed home.
Now, this couldn't have been fun to deal with...they got home about three hours after they planned to (with a full day of moving stuff planned for the following day), they had to pay over two hundred dollars for the tow, but really, if something was going to go wrong, that's probably as well as it could go, right? I mean, the idea of losing a tire while going 70 on the highway is incredibly frightening. And they could have lost a tire while on the narrow ramps to the second or third floor of the parking garage, snarling traffic leaving O'Hare. So all in all, this was a close call that worked out.
A few months ago, my cousin had a seizure while driving. Again, it was very fortunate that he was able to get the car in park before losing complete control. And doubly fortunately, the seizure took place on the road directly in front of a hospital. Come on, if that happened in a movie, and that saved the character's life, you wouldn't believe it.
And to complete the rule of threes, and continue the theme of vehicle trauma, I was jetskiing (waverunning?) years ago with a friend. I cut across his nose to make a wake for him to jump and my hand slipped off the throttle. I ended up getting T-boned. Both jetskis were cracked, and it cost us over two thousand dollars to fix them (I honestly don't know if we even bothered to ride them again after we got them fixed). But when I saw the damage to the jetski I was driving...I would say the nose of his machine missed my bare ankle by about two inches. Just think about that - a direct impact on my ankle bone at around twenty miles an hour by a 700-pound waverunner. In the middle of a lake. It could have been terribly awful, but fortunately, it ended up just being awful.
If you have had any close calls, I would love to read about them in the "Comments" section.
4 comments:
This person I know, we'll call him Tim Fraggley was once assaulted with a beer bottle and knocked out. As he tried to rise to his feet, a fine young man took a running start and kicked him in the face. The impact was sufficient to shatter his right jaw hinge. Upon a physicians examination, he was told he was lucky to be alive, as if his jaw hadn't been hanging loosely open (as a result of a concussion and alcohol) the kick would have spun his head quickly enough to sever his spinal column.
Holy smoke! Tim Fraggley was saved by alcohol!
This is why I let Alex Schnooza do all my fighting for me.
if you think driving at 70 mph on the interstate is atrociously fast, you and my mother in law would get along just fine.
my dad had a close call on the interstate once. he was behind some truck that had rocks and crap in the back. a sizeable one got loose and hit the hood of his car in just the perfect spot that the next bounce was where the top of the windshield meets the roof of the car. it did a lot of damage to his car. BUT, if the rock had bounced differently, it would have been through the windshield and in his face.
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