today wasn’t our day…
7:45am…surfboards in the back…i borrowed my old forerunner from Malia for a weekend trip to Bandon Dunes - aka Golf Heaven…but that was tomorrow…today was surf!
Reports were showing 11ft 11sec, only 1 ft of wind waves…Oliver and I were discussing important matters, what spot would be good on a north wind, a south west swell, a rising tide…
There was snow on the sides of the road, another wintry day in Oregon…cold, big surf was on our minds…a turn in the road, all of a sudden i felt the back of the truck slide…
a calm, cool oliver instructed me… “Stay cool man…” the car slid into the oncoming lane…my immediate frozen reaction turned into “what do I do? what does stay cool mean?” I turned the wheel left, then right…still sliding…my foot was on the break…i slowly tapped it…like a sharp cutback, i felt our momentum change from left to right…we were now drifting sideways towards the edge of the highway…a slow motion movie…”here we go…”
crunch…
i look to my passenger on the right… everything seems wrong, my coffee cup is near my head…a tight pull on my shoulder turns out to be my seatbelt…
“you okay man?”
“yeah, you okay man?”
“yeah…”
then it dawned on me…we were upside down in a ditch…our ballerina glide across highway 26, ending with a dramatic crescendo in the trees and snow…
our foggy realization of the events of the last 3 seconds turned quickly into “how do we get out?”
“we’re going to drop…” mentioned oliver as he prepared to undo his seat belt. I did the same, crumpling my body onto the roof of my once cherished forerunner. looking to our sides, we realized that both passenger and driver side doors and windows were deep in dirt…looking behind oliver, i saw that the back window had blown out…
“hey, you guys okay?” shouted two guys who had pulled over to help…their arms reaching into the gaping hole where the back window once was…
“yeah, we just need to get this seat back…” i mumbled as i reached up to the passenger seat lever…pulling the seat back, crawling on the upholstered roof of the car i emerged from the wreak…stumbling through some prickly bushes, i turned back to watch my surf partner emerge from the flipped truck…
A cast of characters proceeded to converge on this scene throughout the morning…from the 18 year old kid who’s truck did the same spin crash about 10 yards down the road from us, to Todd, the tow-master who hauled us back to portland with humor and warm laughs…
Halfway between the wreck and portland, my flip-runner now strapped to the back of an F-450, Todd’s dolly tire went flat and our caravan paused on the side of the road once again…as Todd worked on the tire, our conversation went to yet another wreck that Todd had witnessed…this one two guys in an SUV…hit a big pine tree which came crashing down on the roof of the car. The force of the impact forced the driver’s seat back, pushing the driver out of the way of the falling timber - his passenger wasn’t so lucky…he didn’t make it…
“sometimes it’s just not your day to die…” todd commented prophetically…
“yeah,” i thought full of gratitude… “and today wasn’t ours…”
December 5th, 2006 at 5:12 am
it doesn’t look totalled, just put a plastic bag on the rear window and ship it to waianae. it will fit right in! glad you guys were okay. i slid out in flagstaff once and we headed towards a ravine but luckily ended up reversing the spin and got stuck in a snow bank and then had to use my slippers as shovels…