{"id":20766,"date":"2023-01-09T00:01:38","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T08:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=20766"},"modified":"2023-01-08T16:33:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T00:33:50","slug":"charles-darwin-alive-and-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/09\/charles-darwin-alive-and-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Darwin, Alive and Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know those signs that tell you not to drive into flooded areas?<\/p>\n

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Every time I’d see one, I always wondered about the target audience.\u00a0 I mean, who would be stupid enough to drive into a flooded area?\u00a0 And if they were that stupid…well, maybe ol’ Darwin had the right idea.<\/p>\n

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Help us help you…click on the popups!<\/span><\/h3>\n
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Based on the cover photo, you may have already guessed where this story is going.\u00a0 I don’t have to look very far to find someone stupid enough to “enter when flooded.”\u00a0 I see that guy in the mirror every morning when I shave.<\/p>\n

You see, there’s a creek that flows across the dirt road out to the West End Gun Club.\u00a0 \u00a0I’ve been driving across it for close to 40 years now.\u00a0 Most of the year, it’s a dry creek bed. After a rainy spell, we’ve had times when it was so obviously flooded I wouldn’t attempt to cross it.\u00a0 Most of the time.\u00a0 But other times when the water was flowing, it didn’t look bad enough or deep enough to keep me from taking a chance.\u00a0 I mean, what could go wrong?<\/p>\n

I guess I’m one of those guys who has to urinate on the electric fence to see for himself.\u00a0 Yep, I finally got stuck, and stuck good.\u00a0 I always figured with my all wheel drive Subie I could get out of anything.\u00a0 But you know, AWD ain’t the same as 4WD.\u00a0 \u00a0 Something I learned today.<\/p>\n

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When I heard the underside of the Subie hit the ground on the ledge (that was now more of a bank than a ledge), it hit hard.\u00a0 I felt it as much as heard it.\u00a0 I was in trouble.\u00a0 I tried to back out, but I knew from the downward facing hood the Subie’s butt was in the air and I could feel the front wheels spinning in the water.\u00a0 I was balanced on the bank, and I could feel the car rocking and pivoting slightly to the right.\u00a0 It was like being in a formulaic movie or a bad dream when a car has gone out of control and is hanging over a cliff.\u00a0 I opened the door and the bank was directly under the opening, and as I looked at the ground, the bank was eroding.\u00a0 In the wrong direction.\u00a0 Water started coming over the door sill and into the car.<\/p>\n

I beat a hasty exit out the passenger door.\u00a0 \u00a0Other folks going to the range, wondering if they could cross, had stopped and were watching me.\u00a0 \u00a0I had set the example.\u00a0 The spectators tried to help by pulling down on the rear bumper.\u00a0 \u00a0It did no good.\u00a0 I was high sided, and if anything, the car was moving more toward the stream, which was starting to look like Niagara Falls.\u00a0 Yikes.<\/p>\n

I called the Auto Club, but they put me on hold.\u00a0 The bank continued to give way under my Subie, so I called 911.\u00a0 They took my info and I never heard from them again, nor did anybody show.\u00a0 You know the old saying…when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.\u00a0 The other spectators drifted away.\u00a0 I was on my own.<\/p>\n

Then a miracle occurred.\u00a0 Good buddy Lee, who I met for the first time this morning, came by in a Jeep.\u00a0 A real Jeep.\u00a0 With a winch.\u00a0 We connected (literally and figuratively), but it was no good.\u00a0 As the winch did its thing, it dragged the Jeep toward the Subie.\u00a0 Lee and I looked at my\u00a0 situation.\u00a0 Lee put boulders in front of the Jeep’s wheels, and the winch dragged them along, too.\u00a0 “If I could hook up to another vehicle,” Lee said, “we could make this work.”<\/p>\n

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Then the second miracle occurred.\u00a0 Another newly-met good buddy named Aaron rolled up in a big Dodge pickup.\u00a0 He hooked up to Lee’s Jeep, Lee hit the winch button, and just like that (with some God-awful undercarriage scraping and grinding), I was free.\u00a0 \u00a0For a few seconds, I thought my future held a commission as a U-boat commander, but no more.\u00a0 Lee and Aaron, wherever you are, thanks much!<\/p>\n

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Never miss an ExNotes blog:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know those signs that tell you not to drive into flooded areas? Every time I’d see one, I always wondered about the target audience.\u00a0 I mean, who would be stupid enough to drive into a flooded area?\u00a0 And if they were that stupid…well, maybe ol’ Darwin had the right idea. Help us help you…click … Continue reading “Charles Darwin, Alive and Well”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,64,439],"tags":[3302,440,3304,481,3301,3303,625],"class_list":["post-20766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feel-good-stuff","category-gear","category-jeep","tag-dodge","tag-jeep","tag-stream-crossing","tag-subaru","tag-subie","tag-wegc","tag-west-end-gun-club"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/IMG_3733-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20766"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20797,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20766\/revisions\/20797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}