[pwd72s]

Gawd, 3 decades or so ago...driving a backroad with wife and daughter, on our way to a family BBQ...a kid bending his Japanese pickemup through the twisties, going in the other direction...gave me the choice of having a head-on, his little truck doing a minumum of 70, or taking the ditch in our (too small... Cindy's "driver" choice) Plymouth Champ...Mitsubishi piece of krap car, a "Japanese rabbit".

Luckily, the ditch was a shallow one...we didn't roll, I was able to drive out of it.

Full of anger and adrenalin, I turned around, gave chase. Followed the little bastard to his home. He bailed out of the pickemup, tried to crawl under some bushes. I grabbed the back of his pants, drug him out, proceeded to knock him silly.

His big brother came out of the house, accusing me of needlessly beating up on his little brother, calling me a big bully. NOT calm at all, I hollered "the little bastard almost killed us! You want to take over for him? "

By then, I'd tossed the whimpering & bleeding little punk to the ground, had a grip around the throat of big brother. Big brother decided not to fight. Wise of him...I really wanted to lay a major hurt on somebody!

Both were a hell of a lot smaller than I. I had at least 4" and 30 pounds over "big brother". So, I guess I couldn't really call this event a fight...but I was indeed mad enough to kill, because this little ****, through bad driving, nearly killed us all.

I still shake thinking about how close it was...and yes, I do believe time spent autocrossing helped me avoid the roll & got us out of that ditch.