thejturn

The "J" Turn or "Proof of God"

 This is not Just about John, but about the J we expeirienced together while high (as in altitude) 

One of my best friends John wanted to go play in the snow.  I had always wanted to play in the snow.  It was coming down hard, and we decided to take my Blazer out to CapitalForest.  I had lived in Centralia at the time, and the park was not far away.  Since I am from Puyallup, and did not really know where I was, we ended up on the Delphi Entrance (far north-west from where we should have entered.)  As we entered, we found that we were not the only ones with the idea.  There were all kinds of people in all kinds of vehicles playing around.  Many quads and tons of trucks were going on and off road.  The roads were composed of rocks and dirt.  They branched out all over.

See this link for details:http://www.dnr.wa.gov/dataandmaps/maps/pdf/cap_for_both.pdf

We looked for a path that went up hoping to find more snow to play in.  We had no detailed map of the park with us, but we started up what I now believe was the C-Line according to the link above.  We stopped on our way up several times.  One time was to watch some people build a HUGE snowman.  We became stuck once while yielding to people coming down.

I pulled into the gully on my right, and the red Blazer just did not feel like getting back out.  We traveled about 5 yards back, then tried 5 yards forward, and then about 10 yards back, finally we just gunned it, and crawled out about 15 yards forward from where we were originally stuck.  This was good, as we did not want to use the jack yet.  We were having fun testing out the ABS, and spinning circles in this wide area where three roads connected.  As a few other people arrived, we decided to head in the "up" direction some more.

This is where things got weird.  I started seeing a bunch of trucks stuck in various ditches.  I concentrated on the road while John just looked at all the carnage.  I found it curious that some much bigger vehicles were having trouble because we were doing fine.  The light green glow from my 4wd indicator went unnoticed as I studied the road.

An aside about Wheelin'

See, my Blazer has push button on the fly 4WD.  I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that I only meant to turn it on for a second, but had left it on.  If you don’t know, you are not supposed to go wheelin’ in 4wd when your wheelin' in one vehicle. You should not usually go wheelin' with only one vehicle either.  It's common knowledge to switch into 4wd only when you get stuck, that is unless you have a friend with a come-along, winch, or big truck.If that is the case, then those circumstances tend to negate any and all senses, and you’re clear to jump the Grand Canyon (but use your friends rig!).

John and I passed a truck with a few people standing on their quads in the ditch on the left hand side of the road.  Further to the left was a steep tree covered face with a bank that came down to the road. On the Right side was a cliff face with some trees.  No guardrails adorned that side.  As we passed, the truck's owner shouted something at us, but I could not understand them.It sounded like “oiyer den.”  We were somewhat giddy at our ability to keep going, and soon there was NOBODY around.  We passed two large metal poles on the sides of the trail.  The Blazer fit neatly between them with about 6" to spare on each side.

The trail became cut out of the ground, with about 3 feet of dirt on either side.  Trees were thick all around here.  The cliff on the right, became a hill. Then the hill got steeper.  We managed to negotiate this without too much of a problem.  We were, as John and I often are, determined to get to the top.  What we were not counting on was the fact that the hill actually gets dangerously steep for a road with DRY conditions.

The wheels on the Blazer started to whine, and scream, but we kept on pushing.  Finally, we came to a stop about a 3/4ths of the way up the hill.  I set the parking brake, and we got out of the blazer.  We could see the top of this particular hill; we had made it almost 100 feet from the top and about 1/2 mile or so from our last encounter with humans.  I looked at John and mentioned that I thought we could do it if we picked up just a little more speed from the bottom.

Then it started:

The blazer had moved a few inches while we were standing outside of it.  Here is where we naturally panicked.  We jumped into the car and tried to drive forward thinking we could just hold our ground.  We actually were loosing ground fast. So I put it in reverse to get a bit of steering control.  We were accelerating backwards, down the hill, and the low gear of reverse did nothing to slow us down.

I was releasing then slamming on the brakes hoping that ABS would have some effect.  Shortly after this incident, I found out that ABS does not work in reverse.  The designers never intended to stop a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed backwards.  I sincerely hope that changes soon…

I yelled at John to put on his seatbelt.  We were probably doing about 25 mph or so, but still accelerating like a Jamaican bobsled team.  The poles were coming towards us fast.  I was driving backwards, and somehow managed to stay off the banks on either side.  However, the poles were narrower, and I thought for sure we would hit them.

My first thought was "Damn! We only had a few payments left on this thing."  As I passed through the poles in some stroke of celestially guided luck, I started to get worried about the people below us.  My mind raced for a way out of this predicament.  I am a good guy, and I would hate to ever hurt anybody.

Everyone who was by their trucks and quads just looked at us with this dumfound, awestruck stare. Their jaws hanging 1/2 way to their oversized belt buckles.  It was in this moment, that my mind translated “oiyer den.” to mean "You're DONE."  Again and obviously guided by God, we had missed the group of people, and hit a truck with my passenger side mirror.  That was it.  We were now doing about 35 mph or more.

There was a fair amount of people below us, and I was scared for my life and theirs.  Somehow, I was actually collected enough in this moment to tell John something.  I told him, “Hang on, I am going to try something, if it doesn’t work, we might be saved by a tree...”

Realize that I had trained my whole life to be a stunt driver by doing far stupider things in much less capable vehicles.  What I was about to attempt is a difficult driving stunt that I had practiced a long time ago called the "J-urn."

I locked up the brakes, put the car into Drive, and turned my wheel hard to the right, hoping that we would hit the bank, instead of swinging the front of the blazer of the cliff.  The blazer responded exactly has I had planed. However, it was not as I expected.  At the time, I thought we were going to die or at least get seriously hurt. We were turning sideways, but our vector of travel was remaining the same.  I eased off the wheel.

As we completed the maneuver, I was facing the right way going down the road.  The 180 trick had bled off some speed.  I let off the brakes for a second, and pushed them back in.  ABS kicked in and stopped us.  The whole time, John was either silent, stoic, or scared speechless.

After a few moments, and a prayer, we got out of the blazer unharmed.  The SUV proudly sitting there w/o so much as a scratch.  We were approached by the people now just up the hill from us.  They asked if we were O.K. Amazingly, we proclaimed "nothing more than some high blood pressure."

The owner of the truck whose mirror I hit had insisted that we had damaged it.  After much inspection, I have concluded that he damaged it somewhere else that night, and blamed me for it.  I cannot believe it was intentional.  I think he honestly thought I damaged his truck. Never to this day after several times inspecting, and once by a body shop could we find a single scratch resulting from that endeavor.  I could not even see where dirt had rubbed off the body.  I still paid for his damage, believing that there was no way I could win in court due to the circumstances.

This story is not embellished like most of my other ones are.  It is reason # 2 why I believe in God.  This is also one of the few (maybe the only one?) DRIVING stories that John was involved in.  The other one is entitled "The Only Time I Ever Got a Speeding Ticket, Paul Was in the Car." 

That is John's story to tell though.

Here is the WIKI on J turns.  I believe I have the record for Narrowest J-Turn in a blazer, but I need to find witness' to document it.  If you were there that night, please contact me! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-turn