A Flying Boat

Yesterday, I nearly smacked into a boat.

I might expect to crash into a boat if I were, say, skimming across a lake in my own boat.  I might expect an errant boat flying at me if one suddenly lurched out of control alongside me as I crossed the causeway with water immediately at both sides of the road.

Not so yesterday.

I almost hit a flying boat while driving down Lincoln Road at 65 miles-per-hour, surrounded by fields of alfalfa and pastures.

Only a few seconds before I whisked by a truck towing a 12-foot aluminum fishing boat in the opposite direction, I saw the prow of the boat lift up and shudder in the air.   I immediately pressed my brakes and drifted to the shoulder of the highway.  The boat lifted entirely, flipped over in midair, and landed on my side of the road only a second before the truck flew past me.

I managed to avoid hitting the boat and pulled off the road a few feet beyond where the craft lay upside-down on highway.

Weirdly enough, the man driving the truck noticed neither my obvious evasive driving nor the boat flipping up from his trailer.

The truck continued on.

A second truck, which had been following the first at a considerable distance, pulled to a stop near the boat with emergency flashers blinking.   I trotted out to drag the boat from the roadway.  The driver of the second truck leapt from the driver’s door to help.

“I see you got yourself a new boat,” the other motorist quipped as we dragged the boat over to the edge of the road and flipped it down into the grass alongside.

“And I wasn’t even in the market for one,” I said.  “Thanks for the help.”

“Good job on the driving.”

“Thanks.  If you happen to bump into the guy who lost the boat, tell him it's here.”

We parted and went on with the rest of a mostly normal day.

—Mitchell Hegman