Auto-Biography: I Finally Slid Off A Forest Road Into A Tree – Because I Was Driving Too Slow

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– Posted on August 13, 2024

After decades of bopping down endless gravel forest roads close to the edge of adhesion in the xB, I lost it, sliding off the side of the very road I drive by far the most often and hit a downed tree that had been cut off. No; that’s not from my head; the horizontal tree trunk did that. The impact was at quite slow speed; no one was remotely hurt. The xB is a bit worse for it, but nothing too serious. I was able to drive home by just tilting my head a bit.

As to driving too slow, let me explain:

There’s driving and there’s…driving. One type require minimal attention, which is why we can get away with talking, eating and other distractions while doing it. But the second kind requires full attention, which is precisely why many of us are attracted to it and find ways to fully utilize our skills by driving fast, or off-road, or on motorcycles, or in my case, driving briskly on slippery gravel forest roads.

This video I shot ten years ago was on a road much less curvy than the one I was on (Patterson Mountain Road) which takes us to the trailhead for the mountain by the same name, our favorite quick, close-to-home hike through some beautiful old growth woods, rhododendrons and other understory plants to view of the Three Sisters from the top.  I took Jim Klein up there when he visited a few years back.

I know this road so well that I can take each curve at very close to the limit, with the rear end gently drifting out, even more so since I removed the front sway bar which inherently increases oversteer, but then I’ve been an oversteer junkie ever since my Corvair and VWs. There’s few things more satisfying than a nice controlled oversteer slide, and the xB does them very well indeed on downhill sections. Admittedly there are times I’ve come very close to losing it. But that’s the whole point, if you’re into risk-taking; it’s all about how close you can come to the edge. And Stephanie never complains.

So what happened this time? I deliberately drove slowly on the way down because I didn’t want to jostle Little Man, who rides in the back cargo area. The reason is because he really struggled to finish this quite gentle and shady 5.2 mile hike, one of his favorites too. On the way back, he repeatedly kept pulling off the trail and laying down in the sorrel, and took his time before grudgingly getting up again. Can we just stay here? He wasn’t hot, as it was cool, shady and downhill; he just couldn’t keep going. It got a bit worrisome; it’s not like I can carry him, given his 80 pounds weight.

He’s been diagnosed with reduced kidney function and I’ve been infusing him, including the morning before this hike. And he’s been quite happy to go on our daily evening hikes after the heat of the day is mostly past, out at our nearby open space, which includes a swim for me and a wade for him at our secret swimming hole. It’s rare that we ever see anyone else on these evening hikes.

This will have turned out to be his last real hike in the mountains. And that’s a painful milestone, as he’s been our faithful hiking companion for eleven years now. I have dozens of pictures of him on all sorts of peaks in Oregon and the other states of the West.

He’s got quite the summit logbook.

And that includes the Canadian Rockies. Losing a loyal hiking companion is tough, never mind just a loyal friend.

And it’s all the more painful because LM was my younger son Will’s dog initially; he got him as a puppy in 2011 but after two years he had to come live with us as Will’s addiction created recurring chaos and he couldn’t keep him. Will died a little over a little over a year ago after losing his twelve year battle with addiction, so that makes the thought of losing LM even more challenging.

We didn’t consider ourselves “dog people” but all these years with LM has brought a very deep sense of attachment. He’s our quasi grandchild that had to come live with us, and we’ve done our best to raise him. And he’s done his best to share the love between the three of us, although he was quite a handful in his younger days; serious impulse control issues that created numerous problems, not unlike his “daddy” Will. But unlike him, LM lived long enough to finally grow out of them and settle down. I had the same hope for Will…

So back to the crash…precisely because I was driving slower, I allowed my mind to wander, to think about LM and feel the pain of this being his last drive up into the mountains. I was really lost in that thought and feelings of sadness when I suddenly realized I was in a curve and had not set up properly for it, and was too far on its outside, drifting sideways into the softer gravel on its edge. It was too late to do anything. And there was a downed tree, like so many after the winter storms that had been cut back, and we just slid right into it. It all happened in an instant, and there we were, with the tree trunk smashed into the windshield.

I turned to Stephanie and said “I’m really sorry about that; I was distracted, thinking about Little Man”. And she said “I understand, I was doing the same just then too”  And we both just sat there, crying and thinking about how our feelings had carried us away, and in this case right off the road and into a tree.

She finally said “I’m sorry about your car”.  “It’s just a car; it can be fixed or replaced”. I really didn’t care about the car.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask Stephanie to get out so I could get out and take a picture of the xB pinned against the tree, so I just backed up a bit and drove off. A little while later I pulled over to look at the damages.

There’s a nice little depression where the trunk went over the top of the windshield. Hopefully it’s not severe enough to create a problem installing a new windshield.

One of the bigger branches left a nice crease on the doors. The xB finally has some battle scars!

A chunk of wood stuck in the door.

And a little bit of the tree came along as a relic of our encounter.

But other than that, the xB is good to go. The little hole in the broken windshield did whistle nicely at 65 mph on the highway on the way home. Cars can be fixed or replaced. I wish it were that easy with LM. He’s still in his bed this morning, hasn’t finished his dinner from last night, and hasn’t gone outside yet (update: he did both later, and seem ok). He’s two months from his 13th birthday.

Such is the painful reality of life; to live is to die. Yes, at 71 I’m feeling a bit more mortal than ever. But unlike LM, I’ll be getting back into the xB for another drive to a mountain trailhead soon. And I promise not to slow down this time.