1976 – No Unnecessary Wheelies

This episode involves my first car, a 1967 Sunbeam Alpine. It was a very cool car. Fun!  Dangerous.  well, wrong side of the road and all.  I was stationed in England in the Air Force and paid $700 cash for her from another airman who was rotating back to the states. She was nice.  She didn’t have a name like some of my other later cars did e.g. Brunhilde, Goldie, Rocket…, But she DID have a new fangled invention called a cassette player and came with a Joe Walsh tape. 🙂

We never had a car when I was growing up in Chicago and so we took the CTA bus everywhere.  Even though I had taken “Driver’s Ed” at Lane Tech High School, my family, nor I, had a car for me to take the drivers test… SO once when I came home on leave from the AF I was able to have a friend of the family (Dick Davidson) loan me his car and I got my Licence.  🙂

Anywho, the story: I was heading north on  the M1 motorway with my gal-pal, Jaya on board. We were doing about 70 mph… No sweat. Just Cruisin’…  cannot remember where we were going. And don’t ask me to figure out again which lane we were in, because of the whole wrong side of the road thing… but an American Corvette blew by us at, I’m guessing, 120 mph.

Boof.

Well, my understanding was that there was no speed limit on the M1 motorway. That may have been wrong, but so sue me.  Anyway, I thought that Corvette is a pussy, and I am going to catch her.

I accelerated up through 80, up through 90, up to 100.  We were heading up a giant hill maybe 3 miles long.  At about 100 mph we rounded the top of the hill and I could barely make out the speck of the Corvette in the valley ahead.  Just then a gust of wind came over the rise and lifted my front end completely off of the road a few inches.  Bad Helpless feeling. I immediately let off the gas and downshifted and popped the clutch  we floated back down as I went through a few gears decelerating.

Four wheels on the ground. Speed 95 and slowing.  All secure.  Dumb.

CLOSE ONE!

Lessons Learned: Do not blow over the top of a hill above 100 mph in a mini sports car. (PROBABLY SHOULD BE EXTENDED TO ALL CARS)

Mike Hines – Emperor of the Internet

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