Struck by Lightning

It was late one summer night; three friends and I were driving down the road toward Hells Canyon Dam for a put in the next morning on the Hells Canyon section of the Snake River.  I am sure we all remember our early rafting years most fondly and we are no exception.  I loved my dad’s old Achilles bucket boat and 10' Smoker Sawyer oars that he had handed down to my friends and me.  That set up taught at least 5 people how to row whitewater; some of us even competently.

We had been planning this river trip for weeks, leaving town late because some of us worked and could not leave till after 6:00pm.  The rain started as we reached New Meadows.  After several miles the second car in our caravan, originally located behind us, was not to be seen.  We began noticing many cars pulled over waiting out what had become quite the downpour.  Not to be discouraged, as we were young and knew everything there was to know, we continued onward and laughed at those that had surrendered to the foreboding feeling everyone now had deep in their stomach.  It was a few miles pass New Meadows when the storm seemed to take our affront to its strength rather personally and began adding lightning to the already sideways sheets of rain.  Perhaps it was the 18-wheeler professional drivers that had pulled over or the lightning that had begun hitting trees we could easily see from the windows of our fearless SUV, but some things never sink in and at that point even omens as dubious as these flew in the face of us non-superstitious, learned, college kids.

My friends and I began talking about how much electricity was in a lightning bolt and if a car was really the safest place to be in a lightning storm or not, as this was well before curiosity killing shows such as Mythbusters.  Within five minutes of the conversation I was reaching for a beverage when I noticed a bright blue light had engulfed our vehicle.  I knew at once aliens had arrived and identified us as intelligent life or the far more likely scenario that we had been hit by one of the numerous lightning strikes surrounding us.  After several expletives and utterances of sheer disbelief we all arrived at the same conclusion we had indeed been struck by lightning.  We pulled over to the side of the road and stepped out to examine the damage.  It smelled like burnt metal; as if someone had been welding inside the vehicle, the LED lights on the dash were fried and non-functional, one of the tire rims had a large black spot on it, and to top it off the hood ornament had went missing. We finally received a little luck when someone heard the engine over the deafening roar of the storm and we realized we could still drive.  For the rest of the trip we had only a radio, headlights and turn signals.

This freak lightning storm contributed two things first we ran out of gas later on the trip because we could not read the gas gauges and second the super sweet nickname of Frankenstein for the long since retired poor SUV (which in keeping with college tradition was never repaired we just used a GPS to monitor our speed for future trips).  We checked our load in the trailer and most importantly found that everything seemed fine and continued on to the put in: no less clueless or optimistic, as not ten miles down the road we also hit a rock and got a flat tire near Tamarack, ID.  Alas the storm and river gods gave in when they realized that no amount of adversity would stop a group of kids on summer break, with an Achilles bucket boat, Smoker Sawyer oars, and no common sense; short of death itself.

by LEWIS HARRINGTON