When I was in university, I worked for a car rental company. I loved the job. I lived in Ottawa, and occasionally, with work, I’d be able to return a car to Toronto, and pick up an Ottawa car to bring it back to town. I’d leave really early in the morning, hit Toronto by noon, grab my car, and shoot over to Hamilton to see my family, returning to Ottawa either that night, or the next day. Not only a free trip home, but imagine this, I got paid for doing it. Excellent work.
One March day I headed for Toronto nice and early, and arrived in town on schedule, about noon. They had a brand new Pontiac 6000 for me to return. It’s first rental was a one-way from Ottawa to Toronto, so this baby had about 1000 km on the dial. Pontiac 6000’s were pretty suave cars in their day. I headed to Hamilton with my tunes blaring (cassettes, of course) and spent a great day with my folks.
I had to work the next day, so we ate dinner early and I took off for Ottawa sometime around 6pm with my belly filled with mom's cooking. There was no traffic, so I was making excellent time and got through Oshawa and stopped at Tim Horton’s sometime around 8pm for a bio-break and a snack pack of timbits. The weather was starting to get a little sketchy, so I didn’t waste too much time.
By this point it’s completely dark, and I’m pretty alone out on highway 401…there wasn’t a lot of traffic, and while I wasn’t speeding too much, I wasn’t doddling either. It had started to rain, but nothing crazy. Somewhere between Kingston and Gananoque, I came around a corner and over a hill to find a sea of brake lights. I completely freaked out, and immediately jammed on the brakes. At which point I learned a life lesson about freezing rain.
On slippery roads, a Pontiac 6000 can do magical things. And to be clear, I was (and some would say I still am) a horrible winter driver. If you don't believe me, check with my brother Dan, who was with me on the day when I was 16 when I put my Dad's car into 3 different snow banks because of my fondness for the brake pedal. On this day in March, alone on the 401, all of a sudden in the middle of a traffic jam, I hit the brakes so hard I almost felt my foot go through the floor board of the car.
I immediately began to fishtail across the highway, when I cranked the steering wheel so hard I swung around and came back across the highway facing the oncoming traffic. How I didn’t take anybody out that night is still a mystery to me. When I hit the shoulder of the road, the car flipped side over side, then end over end, and I finally came to rest, upside down in the ditch. It was spring, and it was raining, so there was water in the ditch. I sat, stunned, hanging upside down from my seatbelt in a sexy new Pontiac 6000 that was beginning to fill with water.
I immediately began to fishtail across the highway, when I cranked the steering wheel so hard I swung around and came back across the highway facing the oncoming traffic. How I didn’t take anybody out that night is still a mystery to me. When I hit the shoulder of the road, the car flipped side over side, then end over end, and I finally came to rest, upside down in the ditch. It was spring, and it was raining, so there was water in the ditch. I sat, stunned, hanging upside down from my seatbelt in a sexy new Pontiac 6000 that was beginning to fill with water.
I should tell you now that I’ve always been a chubby dude. Those guys at GM make a strong seatbelt, that’s for sure.
I’m sure I was in shock, so it never occurred to me to turn the car off. A bunch of concerned folks were outside of the car screaming at me, and all I could think about was to gather up the timbits that were floating around in the water so it didn’t look like the chubby dude lost control of his car while going after a loose timbit. Finally somebody broke a window, reached in and turned the car off, at which point I released the seatbelt and splashed down into the water, cutting my hand on some broken glass…thankfully my only injury.
I learned that night that when you total your car on the side of the highway late on a rainy night, that the Ontario Provincial Police shake your hand and wish you good luck before they drive away and leave you at the side of the road. Luckily, I got a ride to a truck stop, where I met another guy who took me the rest of the way into Ottawa. It was no easy feat getting a ride, as I hadn't noticed until much later that I had wiped a lot of blood from the cuts on my hand all over my face. I looked like a refugee from a really bad horror movie.
So imagine going on a work trip, to return work’s car, and showing up at work without the car. I was a bit worried for my job, not to mention worried about having to replace a Pontiac 6000. When I arrived, followed closely by the flatbed with the remains of a rust-coloured Pontiac 6000 in tow, I’ll always remember trying to explain to my boss, Ray, a scrappy French guy, that there were hundreds of accidents on the 401 that night…his response, “there may have been hundreds of accidents out there, but there were thousands of cars that passed those accidents…why couldn’t you be one of those?” Now imagine it with a french accent.
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