I was upside down, thinking “wow, I could die, but maybe not” and then the car landed on all fours. Here I was coming back from BCM on Majorca. It was around 6am, me and Khan, enjoying life, sweating the summer away on the dance floors of Europe, and always looking for action. It was decadence at it’s finest, almost getting killed for the third time on this trip. That was it, putting yourself on the edge of life, tempting fate, winning and making it through your 20’s. Khan and I had been backpacking all over southern Europe for the last 2 months with the primary goal of hitting dance club after dance club until we reached the point of exhaustion. We had become vampires of the dance floor, in search of good times and beautiful women. On top of the club circuit pinnacle was BCM on the big island of Majorca.
BCM was a massive club situated smack dab in the middle of the British overrun town of Magaluf. Everywhere you looked you saw the British flag flying and the British accent flowing through the air. Once inside, your eyes were filled with fascinating laser-light shows and the awe of 3 stories rocking back and forth. Our mission was to booze up on the way there and then dance all night with women from all over Europe. The music was fantastic and the good times were there for the taking. By 5am, we had sweated out our last cocktail and were out of luck on the lady ticket. Though obviously not a completely successful night, we ventured back out into the morning twilight, with visions of sleep time in our heads.
We almost made it back to the condo, when our rental car decided to take a wrong turn. Actually, I was the one behind the wheel and in retrospect, the corner didn’t seem that bad at all. In fact, it was a simple curve, but my mind was still on the dance floor and not on the road. The funny thing is that I can remember every moment of the crash. I can remember missing the corner and then putting my foot on the brake just before we barreled into a very large tree. So the braking saved us from the tree, but then caused the car to go into a roll. Yet, it seemed like a very delicate roll and the car appeared to glide over the bushes on the side of the road. The great thing was that the rolling stopped after one roll and we landed on all four tires. The only downside was that the windshield popped out from the force of my buddy’s head slamming in to it. Once the car stopped, I looked around and realized that at first glance all was still intact. Khan had a slight bump on his head and his knee was a bit scraped up. Other than that we were good. We jumped out of the car and started doing a dance around the car. We had tested the odds and won. We then proceeded to grab 2 beers out of the dumped cooler and made the toast of our life. Little did we know that a farmer in the distance was watching our every move.
After toasting to our new lease on life, we climbed back into the car and passed out. There was no way to drive away from the scene. Next thing we know, 2 Spanish police officers are knocking on the roof of the car, trying to wake us up or trying to determine if we had expired. One awake, we tried to explain to them that the turn was very sharp and we had misjudged it. They looked around for any evidence of alcohol and then took us down to the local station. In our previous moment of triumph, I had decided that stashing any evidence of booze was probably in our best interest. With this thought in mind, I quickly collected all beer cans and the cooler and stashed them under a large rock. Thus our butts were saved for the time being.
Once at the police station, they proceeded to mildly interrogate us about the details of the incident. We pleaded to being guilty of bad driving only. The subject of alcohol was quickly passed over. With no reason to hold us, we were sent on our merry way. Yet the story doesn’t end here. In order to stay out of trouble, we had to go on a recon mission. Our goal was to go back to the scene of the crime and get our cooler. If the damn thing were found, it would unravel our whole story to the local police. So later that day we headed back to the spot. This time we were in our new rental and as we pulled up, we saw the old car being towed away. That was pretty weird. We managed to dig up the cooler without being spotted by anyone. The farmer must have been on his lunch break or enjoying siesta, for we did not see him spying on us. Apparently he also had talked to the police and had told them that we were drinking beers right after the crash. This is the main reason why we had to go on this reconnaissance mission. If the cooler was found, our story would lose out against his and we would be up the creek without a new rental. The mission was successful and we did go on our merry way this time.
Over the next few days, we would pass that fateful spot and think about how lucky we had been that night. The fact is we were damn lucky. We could have easily rammed right into that very large tree on the side of the road. Then I wouldn’t be here to write this story. I wouldn’t be here to meet my future wife. I wouldn’t be here to do anything worthwhile. I had once again escaped the dangers of my 20’s, the dangers of my youth. If you can make it through your 20’s, you have a good shot of making it the rest of the way. These are the tricky times. It is great to live life to the fullest, but sometimes the fullest can catch up with you and catch you when you least expect it. I didn’t expect to roll the car that night, but it happened. It happened because I was out there experiencing Europe, experiencing life. These are the chances we must take to live life without regrets. Luckily, there were no regrets that day.