“Serving overseas as a small-town boy from America is intense, stressful and humorous! Enjoy a light-hearted story with me from our last 20 years overseas!”
—Matt
Sports Page for Road Closures
I assume most people check the sports section of the newspaper or a favorite website to get yesterday’s scores and know what to watch today. I have to check the sports section for road closures while living overseas.
Middle America has a great racing history, but I don’t know of any rally races (well, legal ones!). Rally races dominate motor sports where we live overseas. Rally races involve small and nimble street cars that are made race worthy through a local sponsor (pizza place, car wash, hardware store) and a local driver and navigator. In the front seat, the navigator holds paperwork detailing information of the race route and tells the driver when to begin to accelerate, brake, start turning, etc. before the driver can even know what is coming up on the curving course. Race teams don’t compete against each other on the road, but rather leave at predetermined times and order, and race for the fastest times. The race route is made up of public roads that are closed for several hours, and in five to seven different areas/stages.
All this rally race stuff was new to us when we moved overseas. Our worst mishap was driving to the mountains to go hiking one Saturday. After driving quite some time, we came across the first road closure, and our options were to turn back or take an off-road dirt and rock path around it in the mountains. We have an all-wheel drive vehicle, so I decided to go off road. The road quickly turned into a single lane mountain path with no turn arounds. I sweated bullets imagining what I would have to do if we met a vehicle coming towards us or the path came to a dead end. Eventually the winding dirt and rock path came back to civilization and a paved road. However, after driving a bit, we realized we were in another area/stage of the rally race and driving down a road that had crowds lining both sides. We had no idea when that stage would begin and imagined a rally car barreling into the back of us at any moment. Again, we managed to get off the race route and decided our best option was now to try to just call it a day and get home alive. We started the process of finding a road or path that would get us around the race route (closed public roads) and home. Later that Saturday we got back home.
I have since learned to look in the sports sections for weekend race road closures before driving into the mountains.
Something similar ever happen to you? Contact me and let me hear your story!
mattsmishaps@gmail.com Matt’s Mishaps, PO BOX 114, Grabill, IN 46741
