I Will Survive

On Friday I left the house at 4:30am to drive 90 miles to spend the day on one of my favorite lakes. It turns out that fish are still biting a Green Pumpkin Senko, so it seemed that all was right with the world, and I left a little bit earlier than normal – I had a friend in town and needed to get some tackle ready to fish the Potomac on Saturday.

I returned several phone calls, sipped on Diet Dr Pepper, and all was fine with the world until about 60 miles into the drive I went to step on the brakes and…the pedal went down to the floor. It was, to say the least, disconcerting. The brakes engaged, but it took far longer than I would have expected.

 I pulled over into the next gas station to calm my nerves. There was a smell of something that had burned, and the left rear wheel was hot. I was still a good haul from home, so I had to figure out what to do. I sat for 15 minutes, then elected to try to limp home. I was just a short drive from the highway, so as long as I didn’t get into ugly stop-and-go traffic I felt that by staying in the right lane, going 50, I could do it. 

Fortunately, the highway was not jammed with broken heroes, a rarity for here in Northern Virginia. I sat on high alert, and when it was time to hit my exit, the pedal actually engaged slightly more than it had previously. As noted above, I had plans to fish on Saturday – could I possibly keep those?

I got the boat into the garage and decided to use my brain rather than my ego. I took the Suburban to a nearby shop and described the symptoms. “Brake fade,” both guys behind the counter responded at once. I decided to leave the vehicle and then made the call to my friend that we wouldn’t be able to fish. He was gracious about it.

I’m glad I did it. No day on the water is worse driving your vehicle, boat, face and friend into a wall or the back of an 18-wheeler. And I’m proud of the fact that I took it pretty stoically. A certain “2004 Pete” (as my friend Chad refers to my formerly-combustible self, would’ve been cursing aloud and banging on the steering wheel. I like to think that I’ve matured quite a bit over the past two decades, but I can’t help but think that my muted and reasonable response was in response to events earlier in the week. 

At a time that the sport should’ve been celebrating some great exposure – Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter on the cover of Sports Illustrated holding up two big bass – we were instead dealing with bad news, boat crashes at both NPFL and MLF events. There were fatalities, injuries, and I’m sure there will be fallout that’s yet to be determined. So perhaps the fact that I remained calm was also the result of the fact that things could have been much worse. My brakes could have failed. I could have wrecked my stuff. Someone could have been hurt.

In fact, I feel quite fortunate that in 30 years of towing I’ve only been in one accident – and fortunately nothing except my Tahoe and my pride were hurt that time. It seems like every time out there’s a near miss, a possible calamity, either on the road or on the water or both. Life is too short to be mad and frustrated all the time. I now owe my buddy a fishing trip but I don’t owe his family an explanation.