*Excerpt from the upcoming Drifter Radio book in 2025
“What is all this writing on the Metro?” I ask my brother when we meet up to trade vehicles.
“We decided to label what happened to the vehicle. This crack in the windshield is labeled ‘golf ball.’ The antenna that got broke off, and is now replaced with a coat hanger, says ‘basketball.’ It’s kind of like the Mustang you took to Vegas. Each dent and bang is a story.”
Makes sense. A rolling canvas beater car.
The car itself is just begging cops to pull me over with all of its driving violations. I am going to have to drive carefully to avoid breaking any other laws that could get me pulled over. A few of the more notable beater car attributes include a cracked windshield, side mirror missing, no muffler.
Since the weather is not too bad to head up to St. Cloud to see my college buddy, Nunemacher, to talk about creating a website for Drifter Radio and some sort of internet radio show. He’s got a background and job with programming at GeoComm. He knows a good group of computer scientists.
Driving north in Minnesota in the dark of winter, I have the radio blasting in the Metro. My thoughts wander about what might happen if this small 3-cylinder car hit a deer. About 5-miles later, the universe decides to answer my question.
I am the last car of a group of vehicles. We are moving along at around 70-mph and have good spacing between vehicles.
All of a sudden, two deer dart across the road after the car in front of me passes them. Instinctively, I try brake as quickly as possible, but I don’t slam on the brakes because I don’t want to crash if I hit a patch of ice.
I split between the two deer. I hit the back end of the first deer with the front right bumper. It spins the deer around and some how hits it my passenger door. The deer to the left nearly runs into me from the other side.
I pull over to check the damage as the deer disappear into the night. Apparently they will be find. There is just a small dent in the hood with some deer hair in it, but the hood still opens. The passenger door as a fairly significant dent, but the door still operates. Game on!
When I get to St. Cloud, I tell my story to Nunemacher. It is wild that I basically forecasted the situation before it happened. Deer normally don’t cross my mind in my driving. Perhaps because I was driving into the Northwoods and have hit multiple deer in the past during the winter the idea cross my mind? Who knows?
Nunemacher and I both agree that “deer” needs to be written on the car dents.
