In May 1979, I drove from Melbourne to a conference in Albury-Wodonga. I recall it because poor driving habits endangered my life—a solo drive where I daydreamed, passing the time and miles. There was a billboard about dentistry. I snorted because my fantasy centred on my dental assistant, the strawberry-blonde Raine.
Raine delivered her professional smile when I required dentistry at the local practice. My history included chipped teeth. My fantasy wafted; it lingered at Raine's thighs and cleavage. Daydreaming kept me alert until the miles blurred.
Impatient to arrive at a design seminar, I let the speed creep higher. I wanted to attend an event to support my thesis on the architect and photographer and their generative synergy. The conference included speakers of interest.
The drive began on a cloudless autumn day, and I cranked the hard-edge music loudly to sustain the weary solo driver. Plus, erotic daydreams filled the gaps. A sore throat and the beginnings of a blocked nose alert us not to travel. Youth ignored the symptoms. I sought the perspectives and contacts at the seminar.
Flu traits tired me while my mind continued conjuring erotic daydreams while driving north. Raine's inner thighs occupied my fancies when heavy raindrops interrupted my imagining. I flicked the windscreen wipers into their fastest setting.
The weather snapped colder as I adjusted to driving through a highway pass.
Should I stop and freshen?
My decision: No, get there.
I yawned wide and slow, close to lockjaw, so I pumped the music louder and opened the window. The result was a blast of cool air. Next, I remember overtaking a car at high speed in a passing lane, entering the climb into another pass.
Then, road glaze — I nodded off at the vehicle's wheel.
What language I use here makes no difference: this moment signalled dumb. I don't know how long my eyes were closed. At least my hands gripped the steering wheel when my eyes opened.
Perilous, speed Russian roulette, blind driving. Easy to drift across the dividing line in a split second or two, or—
It is unknown. If my 'nod off' lasted longer, the odds insisted dead, rolling and tumbling down an embankment to an early grave. Surely, a nod, a mere second or two, if more, chance chose me as a pin-up boy.
It's ridiculous to realise that a second can decide the course of your whole life. At high speed, I drifted left and veered towards the rocky cut edge of a major highway. The jagged, exposed bedrock loomed too close, sweeping into view between the wiper blades.
The tyres skidded in loose gravel. I processed fast but lacked time to react or the space to correct my driving. An impact loomed as a certainty. The embankment dominated my vision, and a rocky-infested rawness amplified in the collision.
Dumb inaction saved my life as I gripped the steering wheel and rode the bank at the impact angle. What followed was a protracted ripping, tearing, and grating. I clutched the steering wheel straight and bumped to the verge of the road, relieved to be still. My head slumped on the steering wheel, and I released a deep breath.
I listened to the dry squeak of my windscreen wipers and turned them off. The rain had stopped.
I questioned myself: How the hell did that happen? Shitty flu.
We blame anything other than ourselves. I ignored confronting the appalling and inexcusable danger I placed others in. The natural road direction meant a possible head-on collision if I drifted right.
Now I recall my childhood crash, the dreadful force of two cars in a roadside smash. However, I failed to draw on this knowledge to admonish myself.
Instead, I fended reflecting on my luck and the possibility of my death in my early twenties because I snubbed taking a break when tired.
Infallibility emerged as I intended to continue driving without inspecting the damage. So, two minutes after a severe impact, I turned the ignition key to resume driving as if I had parked to take a break by the side of the road. Nothing turned over in the engine.
In hindsight, nothing turned over in my mind. Mild shock is not an excuse. The engine, not responding, forced me out of my car. I eased to the front of my Datsun.
There was a shredded front left tire that buckled into the engine cavity. I banged the hood twice as I surveyed jarred, crumpled metal, the radiator askew and squeezed under the windscreen—severe damage, requiring a tow truck.
The last country town I passed by a while ago. Unable to drive, I hitched a lift, lugging my travel bag. A passing driver assisted me by dropping me off outside a small-town post office. Here, I rang and arranged a tow truck.
Next, I asked a passerby where the intercity bus stopped. They told me outside the local hotel and bar. Outside the hotel, I checked the timetable and ticketing board. I contemplated a two-hour wait as I purchased a ticket inside the hotel. Finally, I propped on a bar stool and sipped a beer—my driving finished.
Drinking and thinking, how often in life can you bank on death-defying luck?
There is no number like dodging bombs in a war.
As a child, chance favoured me in a severe car crash. The sequence of events unfolded beyond my control. My mother chose the time we left my grandparents' house. She decided where to park on the verge of a country road. A lack of seatbelts, the era before government legislation. Another driver provided the speed and contact that spun our car. Then it's physics: how fast and how many times our vehicle turned. This determined the height and how far I flew. Luck prescribed my landing. Millimetres determined my survival versus a decapitating barbed-wire fence.
As a young man, chance favoured me, napping at the wheel.
How long had I nodded?
A second or two determined my future.
It started to rain and hail, pounding on the hotel's street-side window panes.
A motorcyclist came into the public bar and heaved himself next to me. His hand trembled holding his helmet, whilst his black leather jacket was rain splotched. The bikie ordered a straight double whiskey and sculled it.
After this, we discussed the crap weather.
"Needed that," he prattled, shivering as he drained the shot glass.
"Freeze your balls off up in the pass, bloody hail."
And he wished me a good day and hit the road.
As I watched the sleet outside, it led to deep musing. I wanted life, yet foolish driving decisions played out akin to enacting a death wish. I tested living by making awful, poor decisions.
Where had my sensible toe-the-line self-strayed on a highway?
As I drank a beer, I realised how fragile human life is. Persistent, yet vulnerable. In my case, twice in life, millimetres and tenths of seconds away from dying.
My morbid rumination, we don't propagate in our graves.
Next, I reflected on my family history and stories of shading the Grim Reaper. I considered the flimsy hereditary sequence of my existence. My father suffered burns and scars in World War Two when fuel drums exploded near him during a Japanese air raid; he had no marriage or children. Dad survived metres from an incendiary cremation.
My grandfather lost a testicle in a bush logging accident. He became a farmer who smoked a pipe and fathered eight children. The unspoken extended family joke. Who needs two balls?
The barman told me the bus had arrived. I drained my glass and gathered my bag. On the bus heading north to the conference, I reflected and pondered three generations of chance. I told myself that I should have taken the bus to the forum. Plus, extra care regarding cold symptoms. Raine and fantasy daydreams dissipated.
Moods - I reminisce about Coral being irritable. She rang me at home after her driving lesson. She attempted to plan to neutralise unforeseen Ruby brashness before, during, or after a game of tennis.
I encouraged her to relax; tennis was her forte. Ruby would be on the back foot.
Then, I changed the conversation to her driving lesson. Coral cheered as she informed me she nailed it.
After her call, I speculated Ruby would be on her toes!