And later, I wrote a book about it...

On the Beach

An Introduction to Dirt

So with my new exhaust and my new skills, I'm chomping at the bit to fulfill my car's destiny and do everything imaginable with it. A post on the i-Club invites fellow subie owners to a day of dirt at the Hollister Hills off-road park. Some guys say it will be fun, because not all of the trails are too tough for our subies, and there are maps with color coded trails like lift maps at ski resorts. I can't wait. My fellow subie owners, Brian, Jon and Ashley all caravan down to meet our fellow i-Clubbers. The day goes fine, we find some great roads and have no worries in our AWD steeds. After a while we find a short bit of road that takes a hard left, then an easy right-left "S". With good visibility, and radios, we block it off rally style and start taking turns. We all went a couple times. Then some of the more experienced of us, start taking it faster, with no issues. I think, "I gotta try this". So I hammer it and take the first left while braking from 35-20, lose the tail, counter steer and brake some more. The car goes into a permanent dirt-plow mode, and goes nose first over a dirt embankment and parks in a bush. My lovely subie is beached on its bottom teetering with two wheels off the ground. I grab reverse - quickly to avoid embarrassment, one flick of the throttle with no momentum and I know I'm stuck. I hear on the radio "we have an accident!" followed by "bring in the Durango!". We pulled my car back to terra firma and found that I took out my left fog light, pushed in the bumper and flared out the LF fender. A quick look at the car and off we went. I spent the next day with my buddy Ashley taking my bumper off, straightening the support members, pushing in the fender and zip-tying my bumper back together. My car is still in this condition check it out sometime!