Zona

Youth wasted on the young, originally uploaded by Dan Lilly.

My son was exiting southbound I-15 onto the Bangerter Freeway south of Salt Lake. A little too fast. A little too head-up-butt. The car hit the curve curb. This curb is twice as high as your standard curb. The car careened to the right as he fought to control it. He lost. At some point the air bags deployed and as you can see, the left front wheel was completely sheered off.

The car, turned mostly by the curved curb impacted the center divider proceed for a bit down the fast lane and then crashed again into the center divider.

My phone vibrated and lit up with Robert's name and I knew what had happened. Somewhere early in the conversation I asked if anybody was hurt.

"No."
"Are YOU hurt?"
"No."

By the time I arrived the ambulance had come and gone and I surveyed the damage before greeting the Utah Highway Patrolman. He cited Robert for failure to maintain a lane and not for speeding despite all evidence that he had been.

The tow truck showed up and took my beautiful red sled away. The wheel remains unlocated.

Today I picked up the check after the adjuster declared the vehicle a total loss. $4,397.30.

When we bought the car it had 18,000 miles. When Robert and I walked away from it the odometer was about 160,000. We got a lot of use out of him. I refer to the car as "him" because it had a real set of balls. You stepped on the gas and said "let's go" and he replied "okay".

I'm gonna miss this one. We sped together on some of the best roads in BC, Washington, Utah, and Arizona.

Damn damn damn.

Goodbye old friend, and thanks for saving my boy's life. A lesser car, and we'd be in far worse shape today.

// posted by sinner @ 1:19 PM