So... Saturday eve I was driving down to the Vintage Treffen in the Beeskow... and I'm cruising along at 65 to 70 in the third lane of a four lane wide section of the southbound 101... around Camarillo CA... the freeway is packed with cars... and there is a Ford Expedition in front of me. From the second lane a girl in a Golf (on the cellphone) decides to change lanes and doesn't see the Ford... all I see is her getting pushed sideways by the ford as he is slamming on the brakes... so then she goes sailing over straight into the fast lane and gets slammed by a faster passenger car of some sort which redirects her back across four lanes where she smashes into the drivers side of another smaller passenger car. Meanwhile I am in the middle of four lanes of traffic going 70 mph and swerving and skidding and rear ending each other all around me... I feel like some nascar driver trying to find a line through all the smoke and flying crap. I swerve super hard to the right hand side of the slow lane and just barely make it around the girl in the golf as she comes to a stop against the concrete barrier on the shoulder. Behind me there are probably at least five wrecked cars and I am not sure how many fender benders. Another car has somehow made it around and through the wreck in the fast lane and we two continue down the highway at about 45mph looking at each other. The entire freeway behind us is stopped and nobody can even get around the mess. Somehow I made it through in an aluminum car with no seatbelts and nothing touched me.
For the next 5 miles or so... it is just me and him and an empty freeway. There was really nothing we could have done by stopping I suppose... nobody looked hurt.
SO... I make it down to the Treffen... which was FANTASTIC by the way... Thanks to Kimball's efforts...and I am driving home in the crappiest part of east Downtown LA and my car starts to make noise... I thought it was an exhaust leak ... but it gets worse and eventually I am running on three instead of four... I keep going as I just don't want to pull over in this particular neighborhood and eventually make it to a spot where I can sit in the shade ... my number four plug was loose and the wire had come off... I tightened it up... and made it all the way up to Santa Barbara before the damn thing blew out of the head. Cynthia drove down in the Vanagon Doka and brought the tow bar... we had a nice dinner... and got home at 10 pm. Fun weekend altogether though. Hope everyone else made it home OK.
Somewhere in between the wreck and the Treffen my odometer went from 99999 to 000000... the proverbial one hundred thousand miles. I got a photo of it. I added about 600 miles over the last 24 hours... about 100 of them on the towbar though.
I am thinking more about what Gilles said... and wondering at which point the cars should become museum pieces. Out of approx 175 beeskows built... there are only 31 or 32 cars left... and mine almost got wiped out yesterday.
I'm gonna keep driving it though... why own it if you don't drive it.
protect me from what I want