I've said before that for most of my life I've basically been an unpaid stuntman. Anyone who might stumble across that statement and who didn't know me would probably think it was bragging but it's true. In high school I pulled off a reasonably-epic stunt that two people had died trying to do. I launched the family Buick off a natural ramp on Brookwood Road at over 110mph. I went sailing through the air for several car-lengths and landed perfectly. It was dangerous as fuck and as exhilarating as anything I've ever done and I'd never do it again.
I was talking to my friend Jerry the other day and it came up. He was one of the first people to hear about it back then. He still remembers the two guys' names who wrecked on the jump but I don't. I can still picture one guy's face perfectly from his "in memorium" photo in the annual. I happened to be on Brookwood Road early the next morning after one of the guys lost it. They'd just towed the car but there was glass and metal and blood everywhere. From the length of the debris trail it looked like he'd flipped a few times. The car was shredded. It was a sobering sight. He never had a chance once his wheels left the pavement. He fucked up. That was the second crash. Luckily I missed the first one.
To those guys' credit, and what made the jump so dangerous is the fact that right after the hill the road forked, and the "landing-ramp" section of the road turned about 15-degrees to the left. Since you can't steer a car in midair it meant that as you were about to land you'd be aimed to the right of your target, and the second you landed you'd have to be thinking about doing a quick steering correction without over-correcting. To the right of the road and where you'd be aimed was a shallow gutter and then someone's front yard. I'd estimated that in order to jump far enough to make a four-point landing, the front wheels at least would be off the road, and the poor yard would have to take the brunt of the braking process and likely get trenched pretty good. That's the breaks, and that yard was trench-bait anyway. There was a huge bush in the yard that was less than 100' past the projected landing point. I'd hoped that at worst I might not have enough room to steer around it and I could plow into it. Other than that it was a big yard and perfect for slowing down a speeding family Buick.
Over the years and thanks to yours truly; the two guys who didn't make it and countless kids getting weightless for a second or two taking the hill too fast, they've flattened the jump out a little each time they re-paved the road. You can definitely still catch air if you take it too fast today but back then it was much shorter and steeper. Right before the top of the hill, which sloped upward, there was a little bump that gave you a little boost just as you launched. I think even the pros would've been impressed with that jump, especially considering the difficulty of the landing. I seriously doubt they'd have done it for free.
I'd probably decided to do it by the time the second guy tried it. If anything it made me more careful. It's probably obvious that I'm a thrillseeker or a "Type-A" or whatever, but I was never reckless. I had no intention of dying, or wrecking the car for that matter, if I could help it. I couldn't exactly practice on small jumps and work my way up to it like every single other person who ever jumped a car. I only had one actual shot at it but I went over it in my mind no telling how many times. I did go over it several times at, shall we say, a few mph over the limit to get a feel for how much the car might lift going even faster, but you had to watch it there because the cops hid in a parking lot that was past it and totally blind from the other side of the hill. If you hit it at around 45-55 or so it would lift your car enough to send your stomach floating up to the roof, and kids went over it fast all the time. The cops knew that and lots of tickets were handed out. The night I jumped I had a 50-50 shot at having a cop see me fly through the air at almost quadruple the speed limit. I guess they'd have put me under the jail as they say, but luckily they weren't there.
I was pretty sure I knew why those two guys didn't make it. It's possible they were just too wasted to have any driving skills, but even given their reputations for being wild childs I at least hoped they hadn't been that stupid. I figured that they'd chickened-out at the last second and had hit the brakes and lost vital speed and momentum. Whether or not alcohol or drugs played a role I don't know, but either way that's what happened. They were still going fast enough to get airborne but not fast enough to go far enough to clear the hill on the other side and go far enough to make a good landing. Instead of keeping the proper attitude until the landing, their cars had nosed-down while in the air. They landed with all the weight on the front wheels, which made steering impossible. If you're jumping a bike, you want to land the back wheel slightly before the front wheel so that the non-steering wheel absorbs the shock and the front wheel can still steer. In a car you ideally want to land with all four wheels at once, but in either case you don't want to land on the front wheel(s). The force of impact yanks the wheel or handlebars out of your hands and will generally throw the car into a spin. I could literally picture the view from inside those guys' cars as they saw the street rising up too quickly and realized they were going to lose it. I'm guessing "Oh, shit" were their final words on this planet.
Seeing the results of the second guy's attempt may have delayed my decision to go through with it but I can't remember. I doubt it did. What it did do was to confirm to me that if I was going to do it I had to do it right, and once I decided to do it there was no turning back. I reckoned that going as fast as I could possibly go and to forget about the brake pedal would be just about right. The morning I saw the wreck I made a mental note of where the first skid marks were, and they were at least a car-length short of where he should've landed. There were short skid marks where the rear tires had landed but they were out of line and it was obvious something had gone wrong. That may sound cold considering a guy died, but there was no point in ignoring valuable data if I was going to risk my own life, and you can definitely learn form other people's mistakes. He wasn't close to me at all. I was a pure hellion senior year in high school but at the same time I was involved in clubs and service organizations and the marching and concert bands and stuff. I made good grades and teachers loved me. At worst those guys made me look like Tom Sawyer. They were ne'er-do-wells for the most part. Not that they didn't give it a try though and that's a hell of a way to go out. May they rest in peace.
With all the mental run-throughs and everything, when I decided to actually do it it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was perfect because I had a credible witness, and someone to tell the tale if I bit it, or confirm it if I pulled it off. It was a Saturday night. The day before I'd taken my VW over to my friend Paul's house so he could work on it. He's now a well-respected owner of an upscale auto shop and a zillionaire, but back then we were big buddies, and I still have the distinction of having one of the few pedestrian cars he ever enjoyed. I took my mom's Buick LeSabre over to his house so I could take him back home after he drove the VW to my house. He wanted to give it a good drivin' to make sure it was tight, so I drove the Buick on the way back to my house. We had dinner and hung out probably listening to music and getting stoned. I think we had a couple of Heineken over the evening but I was nowhere near drunk.
Aside from the jump and a few other mild hills and curves, Brookwood Road is basically a straight shot. Several roads branch off at various angles along the way. I guess it's around 1-1/2 miles from the end of the road to the hill. It's plenty of distance to get up a good head of steam. I'd never seen my VW from behind so I followed Paul so I could see how my car was riding. After about 6-8 blocks there's a stop sign. When we first turned on to Brookwood I had no plans to jump. After a block or two I had plans to jump. It was totally off the cuff. I hit the gas. I can still picture the look on Paul's face as I blew through the stop sign in the left lane and passed him going around 60-65mph. He looked at me with an "Oh, shit...you're really gonna do it!" grin on his face. We'd discussed it before but I'm not sure Paul thought I'd ever actually go through with it, but at that point he knew I was serious. All I could think about was "Get up as much speed as you can, and DO NOT touch the brakes." Paul gave me a thumbs-up and sped up so he could get a better view of the jump...sort of like a chase-plane. It was on.
I continued to build up speed. The speedo only went up to 105 or 110, even though the car could go faster than that. I think it was some "safety measure" that was designed to make people not drive so fast, but all it did was not let me know exactly how fast I was going. All I know is that it was completely pegged, and I knew I was going faster than it would register. I'd guess I was going at least 115 when I hit the jump. All this last-minute shit was going through my head..."Don't touch the brake pedal. Two guys died trying this. Get ready to make quick steering corrections but don't grip too tightly." I knew that when I landed I'd be headed for the front yard and I knew I'd have to steer a bit to the left, but I couldn't turn too much or the car would flip. I knew I'd have to make two quick corrections- first a light steer to the left and then immediately a gentle steer to the right to compensate, and that's exactly how it went. I'd estimated the spot where I could still slow down enough if I decided to call it off, and I was about to blaze right through it. I knew that at the jump a road branched off to the right and went uphill. I figured that if I passed the point of no return but I saw headlights or whatever, I could veer to the right and use the hill as a "speed sink" to slow my speed. I'd passed the spot and there were no headlights approaching. This was it.
I hit the jump at however fast I was going, and WHOOSH I was flying. They say time slows down during things like this, and I can say that it did seem to slow down. It was like: "OHHHHHHHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" It seemed like I was in the air for a lot longer that I was. I knew that I'd gone fast enough and that it was going to be a sweet jump by the car's attitude. I knew I was going to live but I was still concerned about running into the bush or scraping up the car. It was too late to worry much. The Dukes of Hazard would've been proud. The car went lying through the air and made a perfect four-point landing. There were two loud barks as all four wheels hit, bounced and hit again. I made two small steering corrections just as I'd planned. The car landed very smoothly and next thing I knew I was back on the road and going over 100 still. I applied the brakes and within a block or two I was back to the legal limit. The first thing I did when I landed was look to the left to see if the cops were there and I'd be going to jail. There were none. I guess they went out for donuts and coffee, but I was sure glad to see an empty lot.
I knew Paul would be going crazy to give me an "Atta boy!" so I pulled over into the lot. He pulled in behind me with the biggest grin I ever saw on his face. He hugged me and gave me a high-five. "You DID it!" he said. "Uh-huh." "What was it like?" he asked. "For a car, it was a lot like flying" I replied. I was absolutely high as a kite from the adrenaline rush and the pure exhilaration. I had to come down a little before I felt like driving home. We inspected the car for any signs of damage. It was a bit scraped-up but not enough to notice. There wasn't even a dent in the oil pan. We laughed for a few minutes and then went to my house. I drove Paul home in the newly-christened stunt-car. "the Buick did okay" Paul said. "Textbook" I said. Knowing us we probably burned a J on the way to Paul's. We talked about life, Debra and Karen, and jumping the family Buick. I felt a bit like a stud, and I was. I certainly earned Paul's respect. He knew I'd succeeded where others had failed. I suggested he try it, but even though he got into motorcycle racing later in life and was fearless on the track, he wouldn't do it. I can't blame him. Once was enough. Yep, I was an unpaid stuntman. I didn't make a penny, but bragging rights were worth a fortune. All the mental planning paid off and it couldn't have gone any better. I was officially a badass. I did something that had killed two people, and it was smooth as silk. Please drive carefully.
