Category: default || By jt3y

They say that pride goeth before a fall. Sometimes pride goeth before the winter and during the fall.

I make no secret of the fact that I drive a big car (and I've decided I'm not getting anything smaller until they pry my Gulf card from my cold, dead hands).

Oh, I used to have compacts. Loved 'em. But when the frame fell out of my dearly departed Datsun 200SX, and I needed a cheap car in a hurry, I wound up with the first of two Grand Marquises. (Marquii? Grandes Marquis?) And as they say, once you've had Grand Marquis, you never go back.

Or something like that.

One of the things that I'm proud of is that I can maneuver it almost anywhere. Take heavy traffic. I enjoy getting stuck behind a garbage truck on a city street, with cars parked on both sides, and one lane barely open. Light touch on the gas, eyes ahead, and right through.

I particularly enjoy looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing the expressions of the people driving subcompact cars. They know that if a big boat like my sleek, gray Mercury can get through, then their Kia Rio can get through, but they can't get past the notion that it might have been an optical illusion.

Or parallel parking. There aren't many places that I can't park. Oh, occasionally I bump the tires on the curb, but I'm sure the QEII bumped the dock once in a while, too.

Even snow driving is entertaining in a rear-wheel drive car, though many people, conditioned to front-wheel drive, look at me with abject horror at this time of year. "You're driving a what? In the snow? In Pennsylvania?" Proverbial piece of ice-cream cake, I tell 'em, especially with a good set of snow tires.

In fact, the worst winter driving experience I ever had came on a perfectly dry, clear day. I was driving Route 136, heading east, in Hempfield Township one warm winter morning when I made the right turn at Millersdale Road to head under the Amos K. Hutchinson Bypass. Suddenly, the world began to revolve and I found myself in a nice, lazy 360-degree rotation.

When the car, and my head, stopped spinning, thanks to the rear bumper's contact with the guardrail, I got out to see what had happened. It seems an overenthusiastic PennDOT salt truck driver had laid down a perfect carpet of granulated de-icer across the entire lane for several hundred feet. Since there wasn't any ice, snow or rain, it was still there, like a blanket of BBs. As I looked for damage on my car, another motorist made the turn, slid sideways, and came to a screeching halt, spraying salt through the air. I got out of there as quickly as I could.

Anyway, driving in winter or otherwise holds no terrors for me, so Wednesday night, despite steadily falling snow, some ice, and frigid temperatures, I started backing out of my driveway. When the back tires slipped a little bit, I just fed them some gas.

... and slid off the driveway and slammed right into a metal pole, putting a nice big crease into the right rear fender above the wheel. I'm no body man, but I'd estimate the damage at somewhere around $1,000 by the time the metal is pounded flat, smoothed with body filler, primed and repainted.

The problem, of course, is that I don't have a grand to spend on this little misadventure. So I've got a call into one of those "painless dent removal" places in hopes that they can pull the fender relatively straight. Then I can do the rest of the work myself. Otherwise, I'll have to attack it with a slide hammer, which involves drilling holes and, usually, pinching my fingers several times. (Having driven junkers for many years, until buying this car, has left me with a variety of "skills," and patching holes and dents is one of them.)

Of course, the pinched fingers are nothing compared to the damage I've already done to my ego. Especially embarrassing was the fact that I did this in front of my house, in full view of the neighbors.

Now, they say if you fall off of the horse, you're supposed to get right back on again, before you lose your confidence. And though I obviously haven't stopped driving, I am eyeing this week's weather reports warily. I don't know if I want to get back into the snow again.

On the other hand, the incident has taught me a valuable lesson: It's hard to drive while you're patting yourself on the back.