A brush with danger (8/20/03)

So, after reading last week's column about the directions to my brother's house in Minneapolis, you have a right to know. Did we find it?

The answer is a qualified yes.

We found it, but it took a little longer than we thought. That unintelligible portion of my notes sent us around in circles for a bit.

The real problem, however, came a couple days earlier.

That's when we got kissed.

Sally and I were making our way up to Wisconsin and Minnesota to look at colleges, a trek that required getting around Chicago.

We went the farthest route away we could, heading to Illinois, then shooting up Interstate 39 to Rockford before hooking up with I-90. And it went pretty well. Not much in the way of construction, and the traffic was light.

At least until we got to Wisconsin.

By Beloit, the traffic had become thick, fast, and more than a little scary. Anyone foolhardy enough to drive the speed limit would have had to use the shoulder. Anyone foolish enough to use the cruise control would soon be rear-ending a semi.

It was the traffic equivalent of three-dimensional chess, with every driver jockeying for position as if the first one to Madison would win a million dollar purse.

More than once I found myself thinking that folks had seen too much NASCAR and were acting out their fantasies.

Things got even more interesting just south of Janesville when a crop-dusting airplane made some fabulously close passes over the highway that could have come right out of "North by Northwest."

That led to some story telling on my part. I was boring Sally with a tale about a crazy airplane moment in the 1988 Great Race which involved the Spirit of Jay County. She was being patient and might even have been interested.

As I was talking, I was also doing about 75 mph and was slowly moving past a semi with a dirty gray trailer.

We were just about in the middle of his blind spot when he started to drift left.

Before I could hit the horn, he flipped on his blinkers. He was signalling a move into our lane and clearly had no idea we were there.

The horn was out of the question.

It was all brakes and steering from there on out. As we moved onto the left apron, the "wake up strip" started howling, then we moved left of that as I slowed the car as quickly as possible.

The leviathan to our right kept coming, of course. But we nearly made it.

Just as we reached the edge of the pavement, the left rear corner of the semi trailer clipped our right passenger side mirror.

With a bang, it was shot forward, then disintegrated over and behind us onto the pavement.

And the truck was gone, high-balling it down the road.

Traffic around us had slowed as dramatically as we had. We couldn't help but imagine what the whole thing had looked like from a following car.

At the first available exit, we stopped to assess the damage. The mirror was cleanly sheared off, and Sally's door had three buffed spots where the semi's tire had apparently rubbed against it.

But we were safe, and that's all that mattered.

A kiss from a semi at 75 mph isn't something I'd recommend, but it does give you a new appreciation of life.[[In-content Ad]]