Saturday, May 11, 2002

Found On Road Dead


Drama in Real Fucking Life

Last Sunday, Cinco De Mayo, I was returning from a DFiVE9 show in Independence, Oregon which is west of Salem and directly east of Bumfuck, Egypt.

It was about 1:30am.

I was eastbound on Hwy 22 when my car, a 2001 Ford Escape, started losing power. The SUV shuddered and grinded to a crawling five miles-per-hour.

Fuck.

I pulled over in a bit of a panic, wondering A: what the fuck is happening with my car, and B: where the fuck am I. I stopped the truck and shut off the lights. I got out and looked at the Escape, as though my mere looking at the exterior would yield me clues as to what caused its mechanical failure.

I looked around, amazed at the clearness of the night sky, the freshness of the air, and the fuckedupness of my situation. Still looking at the disabled truck (which I bought a mere two months earlier) I walked around to the passenger side...

My next recollection is me, flat on my stomach, looking up at the reflection of the moon on my truck's white paint job, nearly 30 feet up the embankment that I apparently fell down.

The darkness was such that I couldn't see exactly what sort of terrain I was laying on, but a panic riddled climb up the hill revealed that I was, in fact, in a field of blackberry bushes. My eyes refused to adjust to the darkness enough to see where I was placing my hands, which always seemed to be a nest of thorns.

Ouch.

I pulled myself back on to the shoulder of the highway. My clothes were torn, every extremity on my body was bleeding. I figured that I could just sleep in my truck, idling the engine to keep myself warm as the mercury hovered at the 50-degree mark and I was wearing only a short sleeved shirt and jeans.

One must start an engine to idle it and the initial search of my pockets (and the subsequent searches as well) turned up nothing but the outline of my shriveled, cold, caucasian penis.

I fear technology as much as I embrace it. Working in tech support, I know that machines can malfunction and never in the favor of humans. I've never know a computer to malfunction and accidentally undelete a desperately needed file. So, with the recent installation of a remote starter, remote door lock, alarm system, I never leave the key/remote in the car when I'm out of it for fear of the car locking itself with me on the outside.

So I had the key in my hand when I took the tumble. The key and the alarm remote. There was no starting the car and I'll be damned if I'm plunging back into the depths of the hell I had just emerged. So I sat in my truck and bled all over it. I called my friend YMike who plays bass for DFiVE9, and asked if he was still in Independence. He was long gone. Turns out, it was suddenly 4am. I'd taken a nap with the help of a concussion I received on the way down the hill.

Long story short, Girlfriend and her friend found me after I called to be picked up. Replacement of my key? $100. I haven't bothered to get the alarm remote. Most of the work on the Ford was done under warranty - the culprit was some air-flow sensor which had malfunctioned.

And that's pretty much how it all happened. Happy Mother's Day. - gooch

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