Lead foot, red foot

Who loves rambling anecdotes? I do!

I was driving through Northfield tonight, going a little faster than usual as I was trying to make it to Free Poker at Dawn's Bar. I passed a sporty little number on the right as I pushed it a bit to make it to the south side of town.

When we came to the next stop light, he pulled alongside and started doing the Male Drag Race Bee Dance - rev and brake, rev and brake. I cannot resist the allure of it, so I signaled my acceptance with a little waggle of my own.

(Let me stop here to say that my rusty old 100k mile Hyundai has a nasty little surprise - it's stupidly overpowered. At least once a month I press ever so slightly too hard on the accelerator and do the zoom-brake-zoom-brake Involuntary Whiplash Tango. You've all done it - the acceleration makes you take your foot off the pedal, which reduces your speed, which pushes you into the pedal and so on and so forth.)

The light changes and I gun it. The Hyundai leaps out to a little lead and begins to gain ground. I have grown out the "Proving My Manhood With My Car" phase, so when we hit 50 (which was pretty quickly) I ease off the gas. My Need To Drag does not include a Need To Visit Traffic Court. The sports car is still in alpha male mode and blows past me - if we were dogs he'd be peeing on my mailbox right now.

He's probably 15 yards ahead of me and pulling away when all hell breaks loose.

His brake lights suddenly come on and I see a glimpse of two deer in my lane. I jam on the brakes hard because a deer in the hand is worth two in the ditc-and before I can finish my little bon mot I see his car fishtail and suddenly there is a deer body spinning across the road and suddenly pieces of sportscar are raining down on my hood and suddenly I realize...

He hit a deer. Hard.

It's over as soon as it happens. I slow way down to 15 MPH or so and try and see the deer in my rear view mirror. It's dark and I don't see anything. Up ahead the brake lights of his car are on, then off, on, off. He's still driving away, but I can read the "Oh sh*t, oh sh*t, what do I do?" in his hesitations.

My turn is right here, so I take it. There was nothing else for me to do - the other car was still going, the deer body appeared to have been knocked off the road, and I was unscathed.

I don't really have a good ending to this other than my first thought after the adrenaline quit was "This is going to make a great story."

So how was your night?