Like many others, I’m not sure about the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but here’s something stupid from the past 12 months…
(Warning: I’m Canadian. Metric alert! METRIC ALERT!)
My wife and I decided to move from Vancouver to Ottawa after getting sick of the high housing prices in the former. (She’s originally from the Ottawa area.) Because the move was so far, she came to Ottawa in October to coordinate the “to” portion (such as securing a place to live), and I stayed in Vancouver until December coordinating the “from” portion (such as packing).
(The following is not the stupid part of my story.)
Now, many of you no doubt have managed to overcome any prejudices you may have had about Canada being a frozen wasteland. Nevertheless, I was very leery about driving through the Canadian Rockies in December, especially given the relative sparsity of communities along my planned route. Instead, I decided to travel through the US, hopeful that its relatively dense population would make my task somewhat safer and its relatively southward geography would make it somewhat easier. And for the most part, it did. Until Montana.
Just outside Bozeman, Montana, it started snowing hard. This was the last gasp of the Rockies; after this was the Great Plains and (relative) smooth sailing. Unfortunately, though I was considerably under the speed limit (of 85 mph, I think, the equivalent of 110 km/h)
I still lost control around a turn and rammed the median at 90 km/h.
Wonder of wonders, not only was I completely uninjured — no whiplash, no bruises, nothing — but the car was still drivable. (After I got to Ottawa, I had the insurance people come inspect the car. They wrote it off, making me the only person I know who totalled a car in the States without a scratch on me, then drove it another several thousand kilometres.)
Examination of the car showed that the left front fender, which was the portion of the car which hit the median, was a wreck, and the impact had pushed the right front fender back far enough that the passenger door couldn’t be opened. Both airbags had deployed, the passenger side one with enough force to crack the windshield. But I was in a rush, trying hard to get to Ottawa for Christmas — this was the 21st or 22nd of December — and so I continued on.
I made it through the fourth day of my five-day trip without incident, aside from a few funny looks (especially from the customs agent in Windsor, upon discovering that I was moving stuff from Vancouver in a rather damaged vehicle). That night I stayed in Cambridge, Ontario, about a six-hour drive from my new home.
(We now move into the stupid portion of my story.)
The next morning, the 24th, I did my preparation for the final leg of my journey. Noting that the weather report called for intermittent snow squalls all the way up Highway 401, and discovering my windshield washing fluid reservoir seemed to be empty, I popped the hood and refilled the reservoir.
Big mistake. The accident had bent the front of the car enough that the latch no longer met the hood. It wasn’t even close.
Not a problem, though. I came prepared! In my trunk, at the top of all the moving stuff, I had a box with a variety of emergency supplies in it, just in case. I grabbed a bungee cord, attached one end to the hood (in the loop of metal that should have, but no longer did, fit into the latch) and the other to the frame behind the bumper, repacked the trunk, and off I went!
I got back onto the 401. Like all 400-series highways in Ontario, it had a speed limit of 100 km/h (which is about 60 mph or so). I quickly got up to the speed limit and settled in for a long drive.
Then I noticed the hood was rocking a bit. Uh-oh. I started to slow a little, as the rocking got worse and worse. Then, BANG! The hood flew up, as I was doing between 90 and 100 km/h (55-60 mph) down the highway.
Miraculously, I managed to keep my head. I looked beneath the hood to see where I was going, and got over to the side of the highway without hurting myself or others. I examined the car. Sure enough, the bungee cord had broken right into two pieces. The hood had whipped upwards and basically layered itself onto the windshield and roof!
I went to the trunk, brought out my box of emergency supplies, and this time grabbed the coil of rope I had in there, which I had inexplicably ignored the first time. I tied the hood metal loop down to the frame as best I could, and nervously ventured back onto the highway. The hood continued to rock, but not nearly as violently as before. Nevertheless, the entire time I was on the 401 I pulled over at every rest stop, tightened the rope (and, as often as not, added more), and stayed firmly below the speed limit. (Of course, keeping the speed limit means you end up with a lot of drivers passing you, such as big eighteen-wheelers with a good strong slipstream that threatened to turn the hood into an airfoil again…)
I managed to make it all the way to my exit, from which I took the back roads the rest of the way home. I made it in one piece, though the plants I was bringing with me didn’t. (Better them than me, of course.)
As for the stupidest thing I’ve done in the past two days, I could go into the incident with the steak knife, the coconut, and five stitches, but I think I’ll just let that go until well after I change the dressing…
Ciao for niao!
Hammer…whose wife still trusts him with cars and knives…just not at the same time.
“The word that comes to mind is `incredibly stupid’…but
that’s two words!”
- David Vernest
