R.I.P. Riddick

This is easily the most frightening thing that’s happened to me in a vehicle.

I’m flying along on the QE2 just north of Calgary. The limit along that stretch is 110 km/h, or about 70 mph to my American buddies. Furthermore, I’d recently gotten free of a construction zone that was limiting the speed of traffic, so all motorists were… excited. The speed of traffic was 10-15% higher than the limit, and who am I to argue?

It’s a divided highway, featuring three lanes of traffic with a shoulder on both the right and the left, and I was in the center lane.

I’m on my way to my buddy’s house to look at a paint job he wants me to do, blithely listening to a really interesting audiobook about King Arthur, when I see my hood wrinkle slightly. The wrinkle was accompanied by a low wump sound, but I had zero time to wonder what it was. My eye only barely registered the wrinkle when the hood sprang open and slammed against the windshield.

The sound was like a rifle shot with a dash of shattering glass. I felt a light sandblasting of glass particles on my hands and face. The windshield held in place, but it was starred and cracked, and it was bending ominously inward.

Of course, the real problem was that I was hurtling along the highway full-speed in the center lane, surrounded by traffic, and the hood was perfectly blocking any view in front of me.

You know, I think your instincts sometimes hop in and take the controls when you really need it. See, I’m kind of a jumpy guy. Anybody who knows me will tell you that I’ll hit the ceiling if you snap your fingers by my ear when I’m not expecting it, so by rights, I probably should have caused a 17-car pile up with a few semi trucks for good measure. But a weird thing happened.

I held a straight course and let off the gas. I didn’t hit the brake because I knew I was in tight traffic with a guy right on my tail. I remembered that I was a few car lengths behind a semi and I pictured it steadily getting farther away. If it braked hard, there was nothing I could do about that, and I looked to the things I could control.

I had no rearview mirror. The console that hold sunglasses and has controls for things like sunroofs and garage door openers had been knocked out by the violence of the impact. It was dangling by my right shoulder, and it was blocking my view of the right side mirror as well.

I had just one place that I could see out of my truck: the left side mirror. I looked to it and watched the guy who’d been tailing me shoot out from behind me and pass me on the left, honking as he went. Sorry, bud. I have no time for your ire just now. Three more vehicles bombed past in quick succession as I continued losing speed. I hit my lefthand signal, but I don’t think anyone knew the urgency of my request to get over.

After the three flew past, another went by more slowly before I saw a gap in traffic coming. I got over into that gap, blindly trusting that the folks in that lane were still moving along at a good clip.

Once in the left lane, I moved into the shoulder immediately and started to brake. The thing is, that shoulder doesn’t feel very wide. I got over far enough that I was nearly scraping the guardrail with my door, but it still didn’t feel like I was fully out of the lefthand lane. Looking out the right-side window, I could see cars flying by at an unnerving proximity.

I pulled to a stop and took stock. Actually, I’d say that it was this moment that I took back the controls. I felt like I was an outside observer from the second that hood flipped up until I was pulled over on the shoulder. But now I was back at the helm, and I had to figure out what to do.

I left myself enough room to squeeze out of the truck on the driver’s side. I got out and went around to the front. It was really freaky because there was only about two feet of space between my truck and the painted line dividing shoulder from lane. In that high speed zone, every car that past rocked my truck with the sudden wind gust, and I felt every one of them like a physical blow.

I pulled at the hood to see if it would move. It did, and I was able to get it all the way closed, or close enough. I wanted to get out of there, and I didn’t feel like abandoning my truck. So I went into the back seat where I always have ratchet straps handy. I put one hook through the hood, and got down to find a spot underneath the front bumper for the other end. I’d had that truck less than two years, and I hadn’t had to look for attachment points at the front end for any reason.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to look for long. There was a readily available tow hook, and I was tightening it down within a few seconds. As I ratcheted, my antenna came clattering down beside me, knocked free by the buffeting winds of passing cars.

I gave the hood one good heave and felt no give. With it secured, I got back in the truck as fast as I could to feel a bit more protected. This was my view out the window. I sent the pic to my friend who was expecting me.

Note: The observant reader will see that the name of my friend in my phone is Señor Poopy-Pants. I applied this name to him in an eight-person group chat years ago because (while I love him like a brother) he is the perennial turd-in-the-punchbowl whenever we are all trying to plan an activity. The thus far unnamed friend in the story will be “Poops” hereafter. As for Poops' response, that's a deep cut for old school Simpsons fans.

I know it’s illegal to drive a vehicle with a shield like that, but I was also only about 10 minutes from Poops’ place, so I decided to risk it. You have to remember that Adam Schnell is now back at the controls of this adventure, not the cool-headed responder who took over during the crash.

Adam Schnell wasn’t thinking straight. He was thinking: Let’s just get to Poops’ place, maybe find out if we can get an auto-glass guy over there in the next day or so, maybe we hammer out the hood a bit, keep the ratchet strap on there for safety… all good.

It was Poops who got me back into thinking more clearly. He came out onto his driveway, laughing uproariously.

You know you're truly besties when you laugh at each others' misfortunes.

“Dude, I cannot believe you drove here like that,” he said.

“Well, what else could I do?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Flick on the hazards, call me, and wait in the safety of the hundred-foot median for me to pick you up,” he said. “That’d be an option.”

“Right,” I said. Beyond the guardrail, there is a huge open greenspace before you get to the highway moving in the other direction. “I just… I don’t know… I’m not gonna lie. I was pretty rattled. I’m still pretty rattled.”

“Uh, yeah. I bet you are. You just Tommy Boy-ed yourself. That’ll do it.”

I had forgotten about the famous hood popping scene in Tommy Boy, but Poops hadn’t. He’d apparently been reviewing the clip with tears of laughter rolling down his face since I’d texted. Here’s a picture of me on his driveway. He still hadn’t composed himself.

It was Poops who first mentioned insurance and the possibility of a write off. I was stunned and skeptical. After all, how could a mechanically sound vehicle be written off because of a hood? I mean, despite the illegality of the trip, I did wait for a gap in traffic, drive over to the right shoulder, and navigate to Poops’ place just fine. The truck ran like a top.

But what Poops knew, and I didn’t, is that hood assemblies attach to the frame of a vehicle, and a violent wrenching can hurt the frame. As it turns out, he was right. When I called All State, they had it towed to a shop and assessed. Hood, wipers, antenna, roof, glass, frame… all of it added up to nearly the cost of the truck itself to repair. They dubbed it a “total loss.”

I felt a pang when I got the news. I don’t just name friends; I name trucks too. Two years ago, I felt like I lost a hunting buddy when I finally retired Red Solo Truck: a bright red Dodge Dakota that had been with me into the woods many times over the years. I felt like Red Solo was a lucky charm for my bow hunting, and I was sure I’d not have such good fortunes in filling tags anymore. (I’m not superstitious in any other facet of my life, but when it comes to bow hunting, I am certifiably insane.)

I just had to include a pic of Red Solo. I had this parody that I used to sing from time to time as I walked up to Red Solo: Red Solo Truck, I shot a buck. Let's haul the body (echo: Let's haul the body). Red Solo Truck, I had some luck. This one's a trophy! (echo: this one's a trophy).

Then I found this truck: Riddick. My jet-black Nissan Frontier. I dubbed him Riddick in the hopes that he’d live up to the name, being dark and dangerous. I’m also a legit Fan Boy of the Riddick franchise, and I’ll cosplay him for any reason.

And, boy, did Riddick deliver! Right out of the gate, I had a three deer season. That’s respectable. But in the second season of Riddick, I had the season of a lifetime. I got a bull moose, bull elk, mule deer buck, and a whitetail buck. I’ve never had a year like that. It pains me to think that Riddick is off to a salvage yard to be picked over until he’s eventually crushed and melted for rebar. R.I.P., my friend.

Silver linings:

1. I’m not dead. For a few seconds, it looked like it could have gone that way.

2. All State was amazing! From the initial contact to the settlement, these folks were champs.

3. Bec, who found Red Solo and Riddick, found me a new truck already!

This time, we found one with a topper, and I’m excited about that. I can sleep in there, and I can haul firewood without a cargo net. It’s a silver Chevy Colorado, and I’ll be getting it delivered next week.

As for lucky names for this truck, I’ve been struggling with it for the last few days since we bought it. Nothing has come to mind. But then a little bit of magic happened as I wrote this story.

A couple of paragraphs ago, I was dropping in a not-so-subtle framing device. I mentioned the crash again, which is where we started, and that’s how writers make a story fit into a neat little package. And as I typed out the words “Silver linings,” I thought to myself: You know… it’s got a ring to it. It’s a silver truck, it has a nearly tragic origin story, but with a couple lucky bounces.

Silver Linings it is.