Whew! It’s a nice feeling to get that car explosion story off of my chest. I’ve been waiting to put that one out on the internet for a long time. Those event happened in early 2004, and I remember thinking then that this is a story that has to be shared online.
People who know me through the blog probably hadn’t heard that story before, but if you’re a bass player you may have heard that story–it has percolated throughout the double bass community. I’ve met players at auditions, gigs, festivals, and the like, and if this soty comes up I always get:
“Oh, you’re THAT guy?”
Now I’m known as the blog guy or the podcast guy, but for years I’ve been known as the car explosion guy in the Chicago freelance community (and double bass community in general). There is much, much more to this story, and I will be sharing all of the painful (and I really mean painful) aftermath in a future post.
That post also cranked the number of page views/visits sky high for the last few days. Jalopink, a car blog, linked to my story early on yesterday, causing a massive influx of traffic. In fact, the two biggest days traffic-wise for my blog have both occurred when automobile blogs linked to my (the other was about my crazy Driving in Yakutsk post). It is humbling to see how much more traffic a car blog gets than this blog, but it makes sense (anyone care to guess the percentage of the population that plays bass compared to the percentage that drives cars?), so I’m happy for the link.
I also got a link from Matthew Dorsai. Thanks again for the linkage.
There have been some great comments on my car explosion post. You can check them out here.
OK–enough exploding car news for now. Tomorrow I’ll be back with some fresh bass/music/freelancing/cats material. Thanks again for checking out the exploding car story, and I’ll be coming out with Part II soon.
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As I was driving home from the Sprouts Market across town, about 1/4 of the way home I noticed a foul smell and decided to pass around the Saturn Van/Suv in front of me, I had just been admiring it as it was very appealing for a Van/Suv. As I was passing it I notice a very strange sound coming from it then suddenly without any warning it exploded, I couldn’t stop so I drove to the next place I could safely turn around. I pulled over and called the Whittier POLICE telling them what had happened and the location of the vehicle. The women on the line asked if it was still on fire, I told her I could not see any fire from my vantage point and that the people were out of the vehicle and it was pulled to the side of the road. I noticed a man walking so I drove past him and got out to ask if it was his car, he indicated it was not but he was picking up parts of it off the road that had blown off during the explosion. I again turned my car around and proceded back to the Saturn and parked in the driveway of the Elementary School off the side of the street. The woman and her son were shaken and sort of blew me off till I told her she would need my name and number as I was an eye witness to the event. So after some discussion explaining to her flames were shooting out all sides of her vehicles underside, something she did not witness or understand, I backed away from the car and had her take my information explaining to her she would need it for the insurance company. I have delt with enough insurance companies to know that eye witnesses are always in your favor. Well after all that admiring, you can cross Saturn off my wish list forever and ever! Not even if it were free, no, no way! The man who picked up the parts left and I stayed with her until her husband arrived just incase she wanted to keep warm my car was available should she need shelter. My nerves are still shaken, what an experience to actually be next to a car when it explodes bursting into flames. I told her I thought someone had planted a bomb under her car, that is what it looked like, and I did not want to experience it blowing up any more than it already had.
Yikes! That’s deja vu for me for sure!