Hi group,
This is not an early April 1st story, it really happened.
Just wanted to relate a situation that happened to me yesterday morning.
Luckily the Tiger was home safely in the garage, otherwise it would have
been mangled and we probably would not have survived. I had taken my new
Love (hopefully to be wife someday) up to the mountains for a beautiful
weekend when I got a case of the "bug" on Sunday afternoon. I was too sick
for us to drive home that evening so we stayed over to drive back Monday
morning. We had started down off the Mogillon Rim (central Arizona) through
a series of "S" curves. We were in the right lane passing a gravel truck (9
yard variety ) which was pulling a trailer which was also a 9 yard capacity.
Just as we were even with the back of his passenger door his turn signal
came on and he was already in our lane. This stretch of road has a 3 foot
wide shoulder and a solid rock wall that had been hewn away to build the
roadway, the left side is a sheer drop off. I got on the horn and the brakes
because he had already cut us off from passing. At this point I started
pulling onto the shoulder (what there was of it) for I couldn't even see the
ground in between us out of my window. It finally got to the point where the
rock wall was too close on the other side and I just locked them up and we
skidded to a stop with my right front wheel against the wall. It seemed like
an eternity passed as we watched the side of his bed and sets of dual tires
come closer and closer as he passed. Finally his bed was past us and then
the space between him and the trailer. Then came the instantaneous bang,
crunch, rip, the shudder and the sound of breaking glass as the trailer
ripped the side off of my Toyota 4x4 pickup truck. He never even slowed
down. A car came by in just seconds later, slowed and took off after him.
There was no place for the car to pull off the road. We checked other and we
were both OK with no damage. I shoved the door open and we got out to survey
the damage. Most everything from the middle of the driver side door forward
was either missing or was covered with black swirl marks. The side of the
left wheel rim was even chewed down to the tire (it was still holding air).
We got back in and pulled away from the wall and continued down the mountain
in search of either the truck or the red car that had passed. It all had
happened so suddenly I was not able to get a license number. We made it all
the way to the bottom and still no vehicles. About two miles further was a
turn off to a gravel pit which we assumed that he was hauling out from. We
crossed the center median and started into the pit area when we spotted a
highway patrol sitting off in the bushes facing down the road. We stopped
and started walking down the shoulder toward him. He saw us and pulled out
to meet us. We related the account of the accident and told him of the red
car that had witnessed the accident. He said that without some license
numbers there wasn't much that he could do for us. He then told us to get
into his patrol car so we could go through the gravel pit area. He asked the
pit office personnel if a truck with that description was hauling today but
no one had seen it. We found out later that he was hauling from another area
further down the road. We went back to my truck which now had a flat tire on
the passenger front side. It had pieces of rock from the wall wedged between
the rim and the tire bead from the impact. We were there about 30 minutes
changing the tire (which meant unloading everything out from behind the
seats to get at the jack and the tire inflator, because the spare was almost
flat from lack of use). while the officer was filling out the report. He was
just bringing us the papers when two gravel trucks drove up and pulled off
the road by the entrance to the pit and the drivers got out and were
talking. I told the officer that the truck in the back looked like the one
that had hit us. I walked over and sure enough a big divot of rubber was
missing from his mud flap and there was fresh scraped paint on the trailed.
I had seen a piece of this mud flap on the side of the road next to my
mirror. I recognized it from a distinctive pattern in the rubber. At that
point the officer went around the truck and asked if he had any close calls
that morning. He said only same damn fool in a red car kept changing lanes
in front of him and trying to stop in front of him. About that time the
patrol car PA system came on with a call being reported by a driver of a
red car witnessing an accident giving this truck's license number. It was a
closed case at this point. He did have insurance.
I'm just glad that it was not the Tiger that got crushed, because it would
not have mattered what the vehicle had been. The only thing was that the
Tiger is not as wide as the truck so there would have been less to hit.
Bobbi and I are both well and thanking the Good Lord for his blessings and
not wanting us to "report in" just yet..
Hoping to see many of you in Eureka this summer!
Cullen in Tempe (B9472658)
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