Today, I was that driver.
I didn't realize that it was, in fact, a pothole until it was too late. I simply thought that it was an asphalt-filled patch. Never mind that this was a pothole big enough to bathe a baby in.
After I realized it was too late, I had enough time to look through my rear view mirror, and watch my hubcap roll its way off of the highway. If I hadn't been in the left hand lane, going 80 miles an hour, and had it not been dark out, I would have pulled off of the side of the road right then and there, but those three factors seemed like a recipe for disaster, so I refrained.
I surfed the internets to see how much it would cost to replace the hubcap, and upon realizing it would cost me roughly $100, I decided to attempt to retrieve the cap. Call me crazy. Yes, I'm crazy. (Doesn't $100 seem a bit much for ONE hubcap?? It's purely cosmetic! But let me tell you, I was so embarrassed to be driving around -- even for a short time -- without a hubcap. What an eye sore!)
I thought and thought all day about the best way to find this lost soul. Using my stellar physics skills (or my dad telling me) I realized that my hubcap was most likely going to be several yards from where it initially fell off (it was rolling at 80 miles an hour, after all). So I entered the highway at the nearest entrance to the incident, put on my flashers (or, rather, thought after the fact that I should have put on my flashers) and drove 40 miles an hour in the right hand lane (luckily, when I saw the cap rolling in my rear view mirror, it was rolling into the slow lane). As I approached the scene, I wasn't sure I would be able to find it, but sure enough, there was not one, not two, but THREE hubcaps within 50 yards of one another.
After I saw the first one, I pulled over to the side of the road, put my flashers on for reals, hopped out and walked to the first cap. I was broken, and not mine. Phew. About 40 yards behind my car lay another hubcap. Again, not mine. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a shiny hubcap in the snow, just on the edge of the drop off into the ravine. I trudged through the snow (in heels!), and low and behold, it was my beloved hubcap!
I grabbed that sucker, walked the 50 yards back to my car, and drove off safely into the night.
Now I just have to figure out how to attach it back onto the car. Because I'm still ridin' ghetto style right now.
3 comments:
such an inspiring and gripping tale! seriously, gold medal for having the huevos to risk life and limb and track down the blasted thing.
Amen to tali. I don't know if I would have done it.
hahahah almost a year after charleston, where i lost not one but two hubcaps on those damn ghetto streets, i was driving in state college and jimmy b called me from about two cars behind and over a lane to say he knew it was me b/c of my lack of hubcaps...
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