Tails of Travel

The old girl is falling apart. Time and travel has taken its toll on every nut, bolt, and hinge. Today the hood hinge snapped at 80 mph. For those of you that haven't had the experience of a hood flying up let me just say its a rush. What makes it more interesting is the hoods on Volvo's don't rise away from the body high enough to see between the gap once the hood is open. At that point your driving off of memory.

I remember the first time it happened to me while driving a Volvo. I was test driving a wagon with a manual transmission. The guy was asking a little more than I wanted to spend and the car had nearly three hundred thousand miles on it. I had just checked the oil and poked around the engine looking for traces of moron mechanics. The guy had just put on a plate and came around to close the hood for me. I thought about checking it to make sure it was latched but his yammering had me looking for a quick get away.

I had just reached 60 mph and was impressed with the spunk it had. I turned from the odometer and focused on the road glancing at passing car and the a quickly approaching curve. Then with the speedometer reaching 65 mph the hood slammed against the windshield. I tried to look for a glimps of the road under the hood but was unsuccessful. I didn't slam on my brakes as some folks would do, so I was still rolling pretty quickly. I tried to put down the window but that was taking to long. I paused for a second and thought about the road a head. Slowly I pulled to the berm trying to remember where the sign post was just ahead. I stopped two feet from the sign - pretty good memory under pressure.