I was driving in Fort Worth, getting on one of those cloverleaf exits in a slight drizzle. Not driving fast, just going out to meet someone for lunch. One minute I’m fine, the next minute I’m backwards going into the ditch in the center of the cloverleaf. I came to rest 180 degrees the wrong way, wondering what the hell happened. Then I get out of my truck and look down and, this is hard to explain, but I’ll try…. In the middle of this grass cloverleaf area is a square concrete hole about 4 feet deep. The concrete is perfectly centered between my rear tires where I had gone in backwards. Meaning, there’s a tire, a concrete ledge going down 4 feet, and big ass hole, another concrete ledge, and the other tire. If I had been 8” off in either direction one of the tires would have fallen in and I would have ripped the axle clean off.
Now I’m standing there, marveling at #1 what the hell just happened and how I went from fine to backwards in 2 seconds and #2 the dumb luck of not totaling my truck. This guy who saw the whole thing pulled over and we were talking and I was watching all the other cars go around the curve. Every single RWD truck or car that went around that curve got squirrelly and started to lose the back end at the one spot and it turns out there was an oil patch right in the middle of the road and the water was making it rise up. I decided I needed to extricate my truck asap. The guy marshalled me out of there so a wheel didn’t fall into the concrete hole. No sooner had I moved my truck than a Jeep hit the oil slick and went into the concrete hole (backwards). So I got double lucky.
Now I’m standing there, marveling at #1 what the hell just happened and how I went from fine to backwards in 2 seconds and #2 the dumb luck of not totaling my truck. This guy who saw the whole thing pulled over and we were talking and I was watching all the other cars go around the curve. Every single RWD truck or car that went around that curve got squirrelly and started to lose the back end at the one spot and it turns out there was an oil patch right in the middle of the road and the water was making it rise up. I decided I needed to extricate my truck asap. The guy marshalled me out of there so a wheel didn’t fall into the concrete hole. No sooner had I moved my truck than a Jeep hit the oil slick and went into the concrete hole (backwards). So I got double lucky.
