Overcoming disaster creates a memorable experience.
The sun wouldn’t begin to peek above the horizon for another couple hours. I was up dreadfully early after not getting much sleep the night before, anxious about going to my first track day event. I had a long drive ahead of me and I wanted to arrive in time for tech inspection and whatever else would be required. The del Sol was packed since the previous afternoon with every tool I might conceivably need (but ultimately didn’t use), so all I had to do was hop in and drive. The raspy, cat-less exhaust, cobbled together by the car’s previous owner, meant there was no way to do this quietly. I mentally apologized to the neighbors, who were almost certainly still asleep, and turned the key.
During the previous two months, I had replaced every control arm, bushing, and tie rod in the suspension. I had new brakes and wheel bearings all around, the car sat almost an inch and a half lower on new coilovers, and larger wheels filled the arches with fresh performance tires. A few weeks earlier, I had put some Hawk brake pads in the front after being less than impressed with my initial choice. A few days before the event I did a final check and discovered a wobble in one of the rear wheel bearings after less than a hundred miles of use. That’s the chance you take buying discount parts. A late night run to the auto parts store for a new pair. Pull the wheels off and swap them out. Thank the engineers at Honda back then for making that job simple. The car and I were as ready as we could be. But you can’t prepare for everything.
An Unfortunate Incident
The October moon was high over my left shoulder as I headed southwest at sixty-five miles per hour into a morning so early it hadn’t even started to look like morning yet. It was pitch black, in fact, because I was halfway between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and South Beloit, Illinois, where the highway has no illumination. I had polished the decades of sun-fade out of the original headlights, but they could only cast their beams so far.
In what came to be the most innocuous-yet-disastrous move of the day, I changed to the right lane. Not five minutes later, a dramatic spattering of deep red blood came rapidly into view, slashing from left to right across the pavement, the trail of some poor creature that had been violently hit and tossed sideways. I registered this immediately, but did not discern what the direction of this trail of blood meant for me and my Honda.
And then I saw the poor creature, or what was left of it, very briefly.
For an instant which is still frozen like a photograph in my memory, I saw a mound of brown and greyish-white fur with a series of sickly white ribs clearly protruding from it. It raced into my headlight beams and towards me almost faster than my brain could make a decision and tell my hands which way to turn the wheel. Did I have enough grip at this speed to dodge it entirely? In that moment, I didn’t think so. It might go under the wheel and bend a control arm, or worse: I could lose control at highway speeds if I swerved too hard. Instead, I turned slightly toward it, my muscle memory recalling the times I had avoided road debris in the past by aiming it down the middle of the car and straddling it. But this object was taller than those had been, and I had forgotten that there was very little I could straddle in a lowered Honda.
In movies, car crashes are usually high in the register, all crunchy and crisp. But when you hit something, I mean really hit something, it’s deep and goes straight to the core of your structure. There was a firm thud that reverberated through the entire chassis from front to back, shaking the whole thing. I felt the car hop into the air, perhaps not literally clearing all four tires but a definite upward movement, as the nose smashed into what I assume was the fresh carcass of a smallish deer. The whole thing was over in a second, and I had barely slowed down.
My first thoughts were very closely aligned with the first stage of grief: That did not just happen. Rewind, Ctrl-Z, anything else but dealing with this, please.
My next thoughts were, “Hey, that was a pretty big hit. I might not have an oil pan anymore.” I decided to pull over in case my engine bearings were about to become part of the crankshaft.
I pulled to the shoulder, put my flashers on, and shut off the engine. I went to the back and fished a flashlight out of the del Sol’s surprisingly spacious trunk, then got down in front of the car to assess the damage. The lower half of the bumper was blood-stained and irreparably smashed inward and upward, which was very depressing because I’m pretty sure it was an original. The oil pan was still there and appeared to be intact. There were definitely a lot of dark, viscous fluids dripping from the bottom of the car, but none of them were oil. I could also see a lot of carnage hanging from various parts of the underbelly, all the way from front to back.
Realizing that being crouched in front of my car, parked just the other side of a crest in the darkness with traffic whizzing past was not the safest place, I got back in and started the car up again. Off the next exit I pulled into a brightly-lit gas station to get a better look at things. I also needed a bandage because I had cut my finger while checking things at the side of the road. Thankfully, it didn’t get infected.
After getting the bandage from the very helpful gas station clerk, I dug out the old scissor jack (the only tool I would actually use that day) and raised the car enough to get a better look underneath. It was an absolute mess of blood, guts, and fur. It smelled rancid, even from inside the car, thanks to all of that being splattered down the length of a hot exhaust. I lowered the car and went back inside to see if the clerk knew of any self-service car wash stations nearby. It turned out that my unfortunate incident occurred in perhaps the best possible place to recover from it; she said there was one, not that far away in what I later discovered was the city of Elkhorn. The lower core support was seriously V-shaped, and the radiator and condenser were obviously perched at the wrong angle, but my engine still had all of its oil and coolant, so I left the gas station and headed into town.
An Unplanned Detour
After missing the car wash the first time past, I doubled back and found it. It was mostly empty, so I picked the bay on the end and once again tilted the car up with the little scissor jack. I paid for some time and proceeded to blast the entire car with the power washer, all around and especially underneath. I couldn’t get it all but was able to remove the most obvious chunks and blood. Another customer must have heard my cursing and poked their head in to check if I was alright. I reassured them and finished up, trying to rinse the mess down the grates as much as I could.
The horizon was beginning to glow with the light of the approaching dawn, so I had an important decision to make. I had paid $250 for a track day, and my car seemed to be running just fine, but the most logical, safe choice would be to turn around, go back home, and make absolutely sure that the car had no major mechanical damage before trying to drive it in any serious capacity.
So of course I didn’t do that. I kept driving onward to Blackhawk Farms Raceway.
An Indomitable Car
Continuing southwest, the sun rose bold and bright into a clear day. The weather could not be better, and I found myself following a BMW E30 on a trailer. I recognized the car from when I was spectating a previous track day at the Milwaukee Mile; I was definitely heading in the right direction. As I got closer to the track, there were more and more sports cars around, all heading to the same place. My excitement and apprehension were building in almost equal measure. I pulled in, found the main building, and shut off the car. I still wasn’t sure if I would be allowed on track, given the visible damage to my front end, but I decided to just roll with it, do my best to hide my stress and anxiety, and walked in.
I checked in and got my rental helmet, then got pointed in the direction of the tech inspection building. As I rolled into the building, I put on my best “talking to the police” act: don’t volunteer any information, answer direct questions only, keep the answers simple. I opened the hood. They verified I had a battery tie down bracket. I affirmed that there were no fluids leaking from my car. They slapped a number sticker on my windshield. I had passed.
At the driver’s meeting I continued trying to hide my feelings and the fact that I was quite chilly; my fleece jacket had gotten bloody, so I trashed it and threw a tee shirt over my long sleeve. I listened to an old, experienced gentleman explain the basics of driving the track. He owned a mint-condition Volvo P1800, deep red over black interior. A man of class.
I took a ride with two others in a white Mark VII GTI for a sighting lap, which the instructor drove much faster than I had expected. Then I got paired up with a gruff but kind instructor named Mike. He made the best of the immobile passenger seat (I still need to replace the seat rails) and gave me a headset to shove up against my ear so I could talk to him and listen as he guided me around the track at speed. He didn’t mention the smell. Maybe I was driving just fast enough to keep it behind us.
After every track session, I religiously checked my oil and coolant, all of which remained right where it belonged all day. I chatted with a few of the other drivers that parked near the spot I had chosen, relaying my morning misadventures to the owner of a turbocharged Miata driving in the intermediate group. Apparently, my del Sol was the “cleanest” one he had ever seen. I explained how it had been much cleaner when had I left home that morning.
My instructor gave me a couple passenger laps in his new Camaro, which felt absolutely savage compared to my own car and even the GTI. He thought I was doing well enough that he recommended I solo the last couple sessions of the day. We started the next session with me chasing his Camaro for a couple laps, then he gave me the point-by. This plan was discussed beforehand, but I had completely forgotten by then and checked my mirrors to see if he was pointing for a faster car coming up behind me. I had gotten so used to being the slowest one on the track and pointing everyone else by. He pointed again and it finally clicked. I passed him and he easily chased me for a while before exiting into the pit lane. I was on my own. It was exciting and terrifying, but I mostly stayed on the line and got more practice pointing over my roof every time I saw the blue flag, which was every time I approached a passing zone.
When the checkered flag came out on the last session of the day, I was already at the rear of the pack; ninety-ish horsepower doesn’t count for much when up against even the most average modern car. But on that last cool-down lap, the fact that everyone else was already through the next few corners and into the pit lane led to the most zen-like moment of the day. For a brief, yet beautiful time, I had the whole track to myself. I waved and flashed my headlights as I passed the corner workers in their white jumpsuits. They waved back. I think they wanted to make sure I knew I was supposed to come in. It’s okay, guys, I’m just slow.
I rounded the corner onto the back straight and the sun sent rays down through the clouds that were slowly rolling in. It was one of those perfect moments that only comes once in a great while. Around the last corner and into the pit lane. In spite of everything that had happened that morning, my little del Sol had done it. This economy car masquerading as a sporty targa had taken the biggest hit of its twenty-eight year life, shrugged it off, and did five full track sessions without missing a beat. What a car.
An Intense Drive Home
Just as I was packing up to leave Blackhawk Farms, the dark clouds began to roll in. The weather had been on my side all day, but it could wait no longer and I drove northeast into darkness which swiftly turned to heavy rain and thunder. I was surprised to find that the roof did not leak, because the last time I had driven through heavy rain, it had dripped steadily from the corners. As I squinted through the windscreen, my wipers on full and yet barely keeping up with the deluge, I decided to consider a positive aspect of driving through such a storm: at least it might rinse off some more remnants of dead animal. Though the storm was severe, I arrived home safely and without further incident.
It later occurred to me that, counter-intuitively, the least dangerous part of my day was when I was on the race track. The track is carefully maintained, clear of hazards, and everyone driving on it is going in the same direction with the same intent. If only the regular streets could be so wonderfully predictable!
An Important Perspective
On that day, any time I wasn’t on track, my thoughts would dwell on what had happened to my car and how terrible I felt about it. I kept apologizing to the car as if I had hurt a dear friend, promising that I would fix her. I didn’t know yet whether it would be difficult to repair, whether parts would be available, or how much trouble it would be to find a shop that would do it. Plus, I faced the unpleasant task of cleaning all the blood and guts off the bottom of my car.
But in time, all these things were fixed well enough and cleaned sufficiently (though I still occasionally find a small, gory remnant as I replace some old part that I hadn’t touched before). It was disheartening at the time, but several years later, I can look back on that day, recall the best moments, and also reflect on how the worst moments helped me to overcome fears and find the determination to press on even when the situation seemed bleak.
They say you should spend your money not on things, but on experiences. Well, a car may be a very expensive thing, but it is a thing that can give you some truly memorable experiences.