Large Fierce Mammal

When the weather sucks, and you can avoid driving in it, it’s always better to just stay home and have fun.

Winter approaches. This week we jumped the gun and had our primary ride serviced for the big freeze. Yes, even the snow tires are on. The Large Fierce Mammal and his mate gotta stay mobile!

I’ve been driving automobiles since 1974 and in all those years I’ve spent more than a few hours behind the wheel in conditions that, given a choice, would have prompted me to say, “Um, if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not old boy.” I pay close attention to vehicle maintenance, I’m highly trained, skilled, careful, and have reasons to live so I take no unnecessary chances. Yet over the years I’ve slid off the road in slow motion once, 360′d in the roadway twice – once in a heavy summer rain and the other in slow motion coming out of a stop sign at an intersection – neither time was there any oncoming traffic, I had preparatory control of the direction my center of gravity was travelling prior to the skid permitting calm action while the controls were ineffective so as not to make the situation worse, and I ended up parked perfectly by the side of the road without damage, bestiality, or unsportsmanlike conduct.

Wait! There’s more! I once had the right front wheel of my car come off at 80 km/h ten minutes after leaving a garage that had just replaced my front brake pads, and had the engine of my car torn off its mounts and thrown into the road by an asshole driving in excess of 80 kilometers per hour in a 50 km/h zone in a quiet residential area inside the town of Bridgewater because he was late (again) picking up his girlfriend (he was driving her car) from vocational school. That last one was a close call but The Gods were clearly saving me for greater things. Two feet to the right and I wouldn’t be writing this.

The asshole previously referred to also walked away unscathed, which he probably wouldn’t have if he’d been in sight when the full scope of what he’d almost done filled my mind about six hours later. Over the years I’ve come to forgive him and contented myself with putting a spell on his penis that, as they say, “may have certain sexual side effects”. You know when they say those words that the effects aren’t anything you would want. You get the picture.

But I digress. Back in the last century I was driving my Ford Explorer the 100 kilometers home to Lunenburg from Halifax on Highway 103 in weather that had deteriorated throughout the day. Conditions were heavy fog, HEAVY rain that the windshield wipers couldn’t keep clear more than a few inches behind each swipe, and winds gusting to at least 80 Km/h. What is generally called a “shitstorm”. On top of all that, it was dark and standing water on the road was obliterating the center line for long distances making it necessary to navigate using the white shoulder line.

As I tooled along at between 40 and 60 Km/h depending on visibility, on a road that was mainly populated by big rigs headed east, I caught up to a small car driven by a tiny hunched figure that became visible every time he/she was silhouetted in the lights of approaching trucks.

The conditions made it impossible to pass with any expectation of safety so I was constrained to stay where I was. As time and kilometers passed, I became aware of an unfortunate tendency of the “auto-gnome” I’d now become entangled with; specifically, whenever a vehicle approached head on, she/he would wander into its path like a moth to a flame, only yanking back again at the last moment. Obviously this person was out of his or her depth.

I stayed behind the mystery car all the way to exit 11 where I was overjoyed to see the other car was exiting too. He turned left and proceeded all the way to Lunenburg so I was stuck with him the entire time. By now though, I was morbidly interested in keeping an eye on whoever this was because they were clearly more than a little outclassed by the weather.

At the time, my office housed the dispatch centre for the Lunenburg-Mahone Bay Police Service. When I got back, I immediately ran the plate and quickly found that it came back as registered to a very elderly Lunenburg resident. Filling out an occurrence sheet with the vehicle information and all the hair raising details, I faxed it to the local RCMP detachment. It wasn’t long before the duty member called back to tell me the interesting news.

The driver involved was on his way back from a mandatory retest at the Halifax motor vehicle branch in the wake of numerous complaints about his driving habits. He had passed the test.

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