Brian Lee
I guess I got a little jealous. There have been some spectacular local displays of automotive acrobatics lately and I was feeling left out.
I think we all reach a certain age and wonder, "Could I have smashed up more cars than I did?" In the 1970s, destroying Trans Ams was a favoured sport here. But later, when I started driving, the cars had changed. My friends and I had prudent vehicles like Tempos or Escorts — I had a four-cylinder Mustang. They were reliable, cheap and under-powered but rarely allowed us to showcase our artistic potential.
During the peak of my recklessness, I destroyed a couple of cars. Both were shamefully minor accidents but due to their extremely low value, both cars were written off. In one, there wasn’t even cosmetic damage to my three-cylinder Chevy Sprint, only busted steering bits resulting from a tire colliding with a rock. Still, ICBC wrote me a tiny cheque for it.
So, I was overtaken with middle-aged envy when I heard about a couple of youngsters’ recent auto wrecking accomplishments. They are prodigies who deserve our recognition.
One Pender boy landed a permanent home in the record books last month when he crashed through a few gates at the Langdale ferry terminal at 1:30 a.m. Most of us would be have been happy with that and called it a night. But he was inspired.
After busting into the terminal, he launched a pick-up truck Dukes of Hazzard-style off the loading ramp and onto the ferry itself. It was a genuine triumph that may never to be topped.
Not long after, another ambitious upstart took a car from someone at the Rock (Garden Bay Lake) before crashing it a couple hundred metres further down the road. He gets bonus points for hopping out, covered in blood, and fighting the dozen or so bystanders who arrived to help him.
These heroic acts gave me pause to reflect on the tediousness of my own life. Being a Roadstar is nice when you pay your car insurance but it doesn’t provide much street cred. Clearly, I needed to launch my own stunt.
Ditches and ferry ramps had already been done but, as far as I knew, it was still pretty rare to roll a vehicle on perfectly flat ground. On a dry day. Better yet, I would do it right before lunch and on Warnock Road so there would be plenty of witnesses. Also, it had to be done in reverse, for effect.
As I enjoyed the invigorating sensation of rolling through 270 degrees in my truck, I wished everyone could experience the sparkling tickle of safety glass while their airbags explode triumphantly around them. I learned that it is surprisingly easy to write off a 2016 Tacoma.
Thankfully, I hopped out without a scratch and was overjoyed to find myself surrounded by concerned onlookers with cellphone cameras. Within an hour, photos of my achievement were on Facebook.
Top that.
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