Headline: "At Least Nobody Was Hurt"

September 2, 2009
Sutherlin, OR

Note: Click on any image to enlarge...

Wow, what a day.  We had a serious failure on the tow apparatus today, and all we can say is "thank goodness nobody was hurt".  We were in a small burg called Hebo, Oregon, on US-101 heading south.  The road made a 90 degree turn with one of those yellow diamond signs recommending 20 mph.  I slowed to 15 mph for margin and made the turn nicely, but immediately found a cat crossing the road so we came to a complete stop.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car on the driver's side and thought "what kind of idiot is passing me here?" to myself.  As I turned to look, it was US!  The Range Rover had come loose from the back of the coach and was gliding toward a house on the other side of the road!  Everything went slow-motion on me at that point.  This can't be.  The safety cables keep the car with us.  The breakaway system applies the brakes.  But, there it is.  How can I stop it?  I can't, of course.  It narrowly missed a pole and a parked car, and comes to rest in a hedge about 8 feet from the front of somebody's house.  Holy crap!

So, we pull over and go figure out what happened and more importantly, what to do.  I call the police and they send a deputy sheriff.  The owner of the house (runs a body shop out back) and I trade info.  The tenant of the house shows up in a tow truck, ready to do some business.  I call the insurance people.  Everyone asks "Are you alright?" over and over.  Well, yes (nobody was hurt) and no (I can't believe this happened).

Once we calm down, several guys stood on the hedge to keep the branches down and I backed out.  We realize that the car has a lot of cosmetic damage but runs fine (well, fine after I take a few broken pieces of trim off and bungee up the rest).  We sit down for a minute and realize that our best move is to make a beeline for the Sacramento area, about 600 miles away, since we'll be in Truckee (60 miles east) and Napa (60 miles west) during our upcoming caravan, so any body shop will have 3+ weeks to fix things.  We hope that'll work out, and set course for I-5.  We stopped for the night at an Escapees Park about 2 hours north of the California/Oregon border, and we'll make the rest of the trek to Sacramento tomorrow.  We hope to get with an adjuster and body shop on Friday.  Not much will happen given the holiday weekend, but at least the process will be started.

What a day!  We're OK and only the hedge and car suffered damage, so we have that to be thankful for.  If you've ever been on US-101, you can imagine what might have happened if it had let loose anywhere else: windy roads could have sent it right into oncoming traffic or over a cliff into the Pacific.  Wow!