I meant it, too. I had a Kia K5 that I loved, it was approaching 100,000 miles, and I had exactly three payments left. I had taken care of that car from the beginning. I kept the maintenance records, did the services, fixed what needed fixing, and treated it like something I planned to own for a very long time. It was the first model year of the K5, a high-end version with all-wheel drive, a beautiful red interior, and enough bells and whistles that even five years later, I still enjoyed getting behind the wheel.
At nearly 68 years old, I had a plan. Three more payments, then no more car payment. I would buy a good aftermarket warranty, keep maintaining the Kia, and drive it until either the car or I decided we'd had enough. Earlier that very day, I had explained the plan to my wife, Marie. I was almost at 100,000 miles, the car was running beautifully, and I saw absolutely no reason to replace it.
“This is the last car I'm going to buy,” I told her.
The universe apparently heard me.
Although I didn't know it at the time, the story had actually begun about six weeks earlier with a yappy dog and a Milk Dud.
My office occupies one-third of what was originally a three-car garage. In the summertime, I can open the office window and the garage door and get a wonderful breeze moving through the place. I often work late, and it's a pretty comfortable arrangement until something interrupts it.
In this case, that something was one of the neighborhood's little yappy dogs. They occasionally escape and make their way over to my house, where they bark at my dog and generally create the kind of commotion that small dogs seem to believe is their contribution to society.
It was about eleven o'clock at night when I heard them going at it again. I happened to be eating Milk Duds, so I walked out of the office and into the garage to see what was happening.
There stood one of the little yappy dogs.
Peeing in my garage.
I bit down on the Milk Dud.
Up came the bridge on my lower jaw.
There are chains of cause and effect that make perfect sense when you look backward at them, even though no sane person could have predicted them going forward. Dog pees in garage. Man bites Milk Dud. Dental bridge comes out. Six weeks later, man buys new car.
We'll get there.
The next morning, I went to the dentist to have the bridge put back in place. While he was working, he brought up a tooth toward the back of my mouth that we'd been watching.
“You know that tooth we've been talking about?”
I knew the tooth.
It was coming out.
The molar behind it has an enormous, ugly filling in it. I have a certain affection for that filling because it has been with me for half a century. A Navy dentist put it there 50 years ago when I was in Coast Guard boot camp. The Coast Guard didn't have its own dentists, so when we needed dental work, we got Navy dentists.
That Navy dentist did one hell of a job.
The filling isn't pretty. I doubt anybody would put it on the cover of a dental journal as an example of cosmetic dentistry. But after 50 years, it's still there. It survived my years in the Coast Guard, a marriage, children, careers, businesses, countless meals, and five decades of everything else life managed to throw at me.
Ugly or not, that filling has earned my respect.
The tooth in front of it hadn't been quite as fortunate. It had cracked, and there was no saving it. That started several weeks of dental adventures: pulling the tooth, shaving down the surrounding teeth, fitting a temporary bridge, waiting for the permanent bridge, and paying the portion that insurance politely leaves behind for you to enjoy.
I have also become convinced that dental drills get louder as you get older. At 20, somebody drills on your tooth. At nearly 68, the sound seems to travel directly through your skull and into whatever part of your brain stores regret.
Finally, on Thursday, the permanent bridge went in.
It fit perfectly. The dentist cemented it into place, everything felt right, and I walked out happy. I've been going to these dentists for years. They've done both of my bridges, and they do excellent work. I couldn't have been more pleased.
That evening, I was scheduled to drive to Arcadia Masonic Lodge to present a Masonic education program.
The day before, I had recorded a video I called Inside the Workshop. It showed some of the process I use to prepare before giving a presentation. People occasionally tell me I'm a great public speaker. I appreciate the compliment, but I've always thought there was something else going on.
I'm prepared.
There is research. Then an outline. Then more research. Then another outline. Things get added, moved, cut, rewritten, and condensed until I finally have the presentation I want. And then I rehearse it.
Preparation has a remarkable way of looking like talent from the audience.
By the time I stand in front of a room, I don't want to be figuring out what I'm going to say. I've already figured it out. The audience gets the final product, not the workshop that produced it.
So Thursday evening should have been simple. The permanent bridge was finally in my mouth. The Masonic education was rehearsed. I had plenty of time to get to Arcadia, and I was planning to stop somewhere and eat before heading to the lodge.
I was driving along when traffic ahead of me came to a stop.
I stopped.
Then I looked in the rearview mirror.
The car behind me wasn't stopping.
If you've spent enough time behind the wheel, you know that moment. Your brain understands what's about to happen before your body can do anything useful about it. There was a car stopped in front of me. My foot was already on the brake. There was nowhere to go.
Then it hit me.
Hard.
After the initial shock passed, I got out and looked at the Kia.
The bumper was destroyed, but that was only the obvious damage. The quarter panels showed signs of buckling. The trunk lid was pinched. When I looked down into the trunk, I could see that the structure itself had been pushed inward and bent at a sharp angle.
It didn't look good.
And this wasn't just another car to me.
This was the car with three payments left.
It was the car I had told my wife that very day I intended to keep. The car I was going to buy an aftermarket warranty for. The car that had nearly 100,000 miles on it and was still in great condition. The car that, only hours earlier, I had declared would be the last car I ever bought.
Apparently, I had neglected to consult the Bronco driver.
We exchanged information, and after reporting the accident, I was left with one immediate problem: the trunk wouldn't stay closed. Fortunately, there are very few problems in life that can't at least be temporarily negotiated with a roll of duct tape. I taped the trunk shut, looked over the rest of the damage, and made a decision that probably says something about me. I still had a Masonic education to give in Arcadia. The car was wounded, but it was drivable. I was shaken, but I was fine. And I had spent all that time researching, writing, and rehearsing the presentation. So I climbed back into my battered Kia, duct tape holding the trunk together, and continued on to Arcadia Masonic Lodge. I stood up that evening and gave the lecture just as I had planned. Preparation has a way of carrying you forward, even when the plan itself has been rear-ended.
We exchanged information. I eventually pulled off the freeway into a parking lot and contacted USAA.
From that moment forward, something happened that deserves to be part of this story because we spend plenty of time complaining about insurance companies.
USAA was terrific.
They took the claim, directed me to the collision center they trusted, helped arrange everything, and got the rental-car process moving. That night, I uploaded the documents online. The next morning, things were already happening.
I also made the mistake of spending part of Thursday night reading about unibody construction.
Until that evening, unibody construction occupied exactly none of my thoughts. Suddenly, I was getting an education. A bumper can be replaced. A trunk lid can be replaced. Quarter panels can be repaired. But when the energy from an impact travels into the structural portions of a unibody vehicle, the conversation changes.
The next morning, I took the Kia to the collision center. I pointed out the damage inside the trunk to the man looking at the car.
He studied it for a moment.
“It doesn't look good.”
That was not the reassurance I was hoping for.
He told me it was going to be close, although ultimately the decision belonged to the adjuster. I left the Kia there, went over to Enterprise, and my rental car was waiting.
Again, USAA had made the whole thing remarkably painless.
Then Sunday morning I woke up and saw the message.
The Kia was totaled.
I stared at that for a while.
A car is an object. I understand that. It's metal and glass and rubber and plastic, with an increasingly ridiculous number of computers tucked into places we never see. But we don't really experience our cars as collections of parts.
We experience them in miles.
That Kia and I had traveled nearly 100,000 of them together.
And I had three payments left.
Then I saw the settlement amount.
That helped.
Because I had taken such good care of the car, kept the maintenance records, and because of the particular model and equipment, the valuation was excellent. USAA treated me fairly. There wasn't a prolonged argument or some ridiculous lowball offer that turned an accident into a second disaster. I reviewed the amount online and accepted it.
Which created a new problem.
I needed a car.
Only a few days after announcing that I had purchased my last one.
I started looking around. I looked at used K5s and newer K5s. I checked dealerships. On Saturday, I had already gone online and gotten pre-approved for financing through my credit union. If I had to buy another car, I wanted to walk into the dealership knowing exactly where I stood. The insurance settlement was going to become my down payment—all of it—which put me in a strong position.
Marie and I headed to the Kia dealership in Ontario.
I wasn't necessarily going there to buy a car.
This, I've learned, is another sentence the universe finds amusing.
Then I saw the new K5.
I had really wanted another red interior because that had been one of my favorite things about the old car. But the new one caught my attention for another reason. It had a matte metallic gray finish, a beautiful color that reminded me a little of the stainless-steel look of the DeLorean from Back to the Future, only darker and more refined.
Then I got inside.
Five years of technology had transformed a car I already liked.
The 10-inch screen I had been perfectly happy with had become a 13-inch display. My iPhone connected through Apple CarPlay. The controls were better. The interior had been completely redesigned. The passenger compartment seemed roomier. The trunk seemed larger. Everything was familiar enough that I knew I was sitting in a K5, but different enough that it felt like an entirely new car.
It was essentially the car I loved, five years into the future.
I bought it.
There was one more bit of absurdity waiting for me. I had done the responsible thing and arranged financing with my credit union before walking into the dealership. Then the dealership's finance guy managed to find me a better interest rate.
Through the same credit union.
At that point, I decided to stop asking questions.
I drove home in a brand-new Kia K5 with a 100,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty and additional warranty coverage—the very kind of protection I had been planning to purchase for the old K5 after making those last three payments.
A few days earlier, I knew exactly what the next several years were going to look like. I would make three payments. I would buy the warranty. I would maintain the car. I would drive it for years.
It was a good plan.
That's one of the things driving teaches you if you spend enough time behind the wheel. We like to believe we're in control because we're holding the steering wheel. We pick the destination. We choose the route. We decide when to leave. We control the speed. Most of the time, that illusion works pretty well.
Then something appears in the rearview mirror.
I've spent enough time driving to know that the best stories rarely happen when everything goes according to plan. They happen when somebody gets into your car and says something you never expected to hear. They happen when you take a turn you weren't planning to take. They happen when the destination changes halfway through the trip. They happen when life decides that your carefully constructed itinerary is merely a suggestion.
Sometimes they happen when a Bronco doesn't stop.
And apparently, sometimes they begin six weeks earlier when a yappy little dog pees in your garage while you're eating a Milk Dud.
Looking backward, I can trace the entire ridiculous chain. A dog wandered into my garage. I bit down on a Milk Dud. A bridge came loose. A cracked tooth was discovered. Six weeks later, the permanent bridge went in. That evening, I headed toward Arcadia to give a Masonic education. Traffic stopped. I stopped. The Bronco didn't. The Kia I planned to keep for years was totaled, and a few days later I was sitting behind the wheel of its newer cousin with another 100,000 miles of road waiting in front of me.
Three payments.
That's how close I was to the plan.
Maybe that's why I've always loved driving stories. The road doesn't care about the plan. It simply keeps unfolding through the windshield, one mile at a time. You can prepare. You can maintain the car. You can rehearse the presentation. You can leave early. You can make all the right decisions.
But you don't get to write every turn before you get there.
Sometimes the road writes part of the story for you.
And every once in a while, you get lucky enough to walk away from it, look back at the whole ridiculous chain of events, and realize you've got another story to tell.
If you want more driving stories—about the people, the miles, the unexpected turns, and the things you discover when the road refuses to follow the plan—get a copy of Chasing the Surge.
