car | Literature and Libation

PSA: If you hit something with your car, stop to check on the thing you hit

April 6, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

I’m a runner.

I’ve always run when I stop to think about it; across soccer fields, down back roads, through the woods away from ornery bees. My default state is up and moving, feet slapping, heart pounding, lungs huffing, but brain happy. As I’ve gotten older, running has become more of a maintenance routine; an active (and sometimes painful) caloric counter to all those beer-borne carbs.

I rarely talk about my running because there’s little in life I find as boringly self-serving as telling people how and when you plan to sweat. It’s just a thing I do and have always done, and I’m not a competitive racer nor certified trainer, so I don’t see much point in bringing it up.

But today’s story requires the background information that from time to time I peel myself away from the keyboard and the kegs, and punish myself in the name of health and vanity.

Last Tuesday, while I was running, a woman hit me with her car.

I use the verb “hit” here quite literally: she drove the hood of her Honda into the flesh of my legs (I’m relatively uninjured, if anyone is worried). I could forgive an accident, an end-of-the-workday bump caused by fatigue or distraction. I would have dusted myself off, showed her I wasn’t badly hurt, and probably just admonished her for not paying attention to her surroundings. But I didn’t even get the chance, because upon realizing she’d hit something – probably another human being – she drove off.

I sat in the thin grass median, elbow and knee bloody from their recent first date with the sidewalk, incredulous. She just drove off. Didn’t look back. Rode off into the winking evening like a bandit on the run.

I wanted to be mad, but all I could muster, covered in sweat and shock, was sadness. Faith in humanity bruised and bloodied, badly.

The rest of the week was sore and soldiered. My sister’s wedding was only a few days away, the whole family had a lot to do, and I had already pledged my help. There was a house to decorate, tables and chairs to move, photos to take, beer to tap. I did what I could without playing up the pain, resting when I could, sleeping when I needed to. We made it through; the day of the wedding all beautiful and bright. We got to be for one shining evening; be joyous, be teary, be celebratory, be there. It felt fantastic to sit and bask in a moment of pure emotional self-indulgence, where that night, that party, those people made the rest of the world disappear into the sidelines of unimportance.

Now I sit, in the wake of the wedding, happy and tired and introspective. I still haven’t fully gripped the potential seriousness of the car-hitting situation. Everyone seemed outraged enough for me, and I feel lucky that I wasn’t more severely broken. I’d been too focused on what needed to get done to dwell on what happened, too hell bent on then to devote any time to the now.

I realize that’s been my life of late – run, running, ran – forward progress or bust, almost no stopping to catch my breath or rest my legs. Sure, a woman hit me with her car and didn’t stop to see if I was OK. But her actions did at least stop me and my relentless charge against time, forced me to accept that sometimes in life you’re going to get hit by random chance, and random chance won’t pull over to the curb to swap insurance information.

In a very strange, roundabout way, I appreciate her for being oblivious and selfish; she showed me that I may have been doing the same in my tunnel visioned obsession with “what’s next?” which isn’t fair to those I love, and definitely not fair to myself.

So, thank you, random woman in her random black Honda, for hitting me. Thank you for showing me the depths of human selfishness, and how painful that selfishness can be when left unchecked, unacknowledged, unchallenged. Thank you for swinging into my life with painfully impeccable timing to allow me to put myself aside and celebrate a fresh start for my sister and her husband. Also thank you for not breaking me worse, because that would have made for an awkward hobble down the aisle.

For the rest of the world, a public service announcement: If you ever have the misfortune to strike something with your car, stop. Not just for the person or animal or fire hydrant you hit, but for yourself, too. You never know what you might find.

I couldn’t find a fitting photo, so here’s a shot of the beers I homebrewed for Becca’s wedding.

How to Make the Best of a Bad Situation

September 17, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

My karma is blue and black and bruised. He’s taken one too many jabs to the head of late, and the punch-drunk stumbling is getting quite worrisome. I always try to stay positive, but it’d be decent of the Moirai to pull some strings (ba-dum ching) to help me out over here.

As I pulled into my driveway on Friday, all but salivating with anticipation for the weekend, my driver’s side window shattered. Exploded. Possibly imploded. Quit the lucrative career of being a whole window to take a new freelance job being one hundred thousand pieces of window.

The sound it made was unexpected. Not really anything like glass breaking, more like a cascade of dry rice being poured into an empty pan. A sprinkle of tickles bouncing off the concrete, door frame, my seat, my skin.

No rock or branch hit it, it hadn’t been cracked or damaged previously, it just broke for the sake of breaking. The window was nearly 10 years old, which in car-years is about 190 human-years.

I checked myself for cuts in the same way one might check for ticks, picking at any slight aberration in the normal pattern of my skin hoping to find no blood, and stood in my driveway, incredulous. I thought for sure I’d been hit by a stray bullet from a 7-11 hold-up gone wrong, or was the victim of some super secret sound wave technology fired in my general direction from the nearby Fort Meade. It took a good five minutes before I realized I was totally fine, if a bit paranoid and crazy.

My neighbors all saw this happen, and came over to check out the carnage. As they grabbed brooms and my wife went for the Shop-Vac, I picked through the pieces of glass, trying to make sense of what happened, and console my wallet as he cried about his inevitable injury.

Before they could even plug the vacuum in, I made everyone stop. I had an idea. How often in life do you get a pile of safety glass to play with?

Moral of the story: when life breaks your window and costs you hundreds of dollars for no reason, take pictures of beer.

Forgotten Friday: Beached Go Karts

September 7, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

(A special thanks to my sister, Becca, for the awesome photos in this post)

I’m not an adrenaline junkie. I don’t want to jump out of planes or off of cliffs or into big holes naturally bored hundreds of feet into the Earth’s crust. It does nothing for me. The love of self fights the love of excitement, and self-preservation almost always wins.

The one exception is driving. Something about clutch and gears and accelerator coming together in glorious harmony, resulting in a symphony of speed, resonates deeply in my pysche. I’ve always loved to drive, and drive fast. It was speed I wanted, and the car was the means to that end.

I couldn’t physically drive a real car until I was about 15 years old, because I was a tiny boy who didn’t experience his adult growth spurt until relatively late. Having my feet be able to reach the pedals was a prophecy straight out of Plutarch; like Theseus growing to a strength to be able to move the stone to retrieve his father’s arms, I had to impatiently wait until my physical body could handle 2000 odd pounds of steel and gasoline.

I sought to satiate my desire for speed in others ways. Bicycles. Skateboards. Sprinting. Soccer. They brought me fleeting joy, but I always wanted to go faster than the highest gear would let me go, just a little faster than the steepest hill could propel me.

And one glorious day, I discovered that they had made cars for kids; smaller things with less power that could be controlled in a relatively safe manner. I’m talking go karts, holmes.

The first time I shoved my slight frame into the tiny plastic seat of a homeade go kart, I felt like Mario Andretti mixed with Mario the plumber. If I’d had a red shell to throw at other karts, my life would have been complete.

I was an equal in a go kart. I wasn’t short or weak. I could keep pace with, and even pass my older sister. I could race my dad with the chance of actually winning. I was as big as the biggest man in the world inside that little black contraption, the 12 horsepower lawnmower engine puttering under the hood, feeling like nothing could ever go wrong as long as my hands were on that wheel.

On the southern most part of Chincoteague Island, Virginia, (the beach town where I spent my summers as a kid) there was a small go kart track that my father used to take us to when it was open during the Summer season. I remember fondly scooting around that oval of pavement, watching the sun sink into the Western bay; its rays throwing long shadows and an orange glow over my race, burning this image of childhood perfection into the permanence of my memory.

My sister visited the island and the track a few weeks ago. By my crude math, I hadn’t seen (or even thought about this place) for nearly 14 years.

Thinking about it, I’ve never see a private go kart track.

It’s hard to tell when the track closed. It’s clearly been abandoned for some time, based on its current state. I don’t think it was ever exactly a high end go kart track (if such things exist) but at least someone maintained the track and the karts and the little house where you bought tickets.

I have memories of this place being alive with noise and activity as I waited in line for my chance to burn as much rubber as a 10 year old is capable of burning.

There are a few more obstacles than I remember.

The bones of the track are still there, but it’s beyond salvage at this point. I suppose there is no place in our current world for the frivolity of a go kart track in a sleepy beach town.

The tires once surrounded the outside of the track as a makeshift guard railing.

You can see from the below set of images that the surrounding wetlands flora has been encroaching on the track steadily since about 1997. There is a large gap in the satellite imagery, but I think by 2007 it is safe to say that this place hadn’t seen patrons for quite a while. The large truck/trailer parked on the track was the biggest hint.

Ah Google Earth, I wish I knew how to quit you.

It’s sad to see this little piece of my childhood in such disrepair, but I suppose it’s bound to happen. Businesses close, buildings are torn down, people move, and nature reclaims anything it can.

But memories linger. It may look depressing to an outsider, but these pictures are a connection to bright memories of happy days. I may have sat in this very car all those years ago, when I was the king of the track, learning what it was to be in control and trying as hard as I could to win some imaginary race against imaginary competitors.

Sounds oddly similar to how I feel now.

Not a very good parking job.