Pat Dolan
Veteran Member
As some might recall, I spent months agonizing over what to replace my Mother's ultra low mile '13 Venza that my wife inherited last summer. We buy a vehicle once and tend to keep it forever. IF they were available new, an R Class Merc or Audi Q7 TDI would be the new purchase candidates, but there weren't any such, so I spent weeks trying to track down the lowest mileage, best condition, least equipped Q7 on the prairies. Found a literally flawless '14 with under 36k miles. It was hard for my wife to give up Mom's Venza, as they were as close as any two people could be and it was their ride to do things together every day for the two years Mom lived out here. BUT, the more time we both spent with the big Audi, the more we liked it.
Younger daughter was scheduled to have our 4fth Grandson on Valentine's Day, so on Wednesday I was wrapping up things around here to head over to Edmonton for the event. On the list was to head to town to move a trailer around the yard and pick up a quote and drawings for some CNC crane wheel tires to do my own version of trolleys and end trucks. Jumped in her Q7 and headed to town just before 09:00 to avoid the 08:00 crazies on commute. Sure enough, very light traffic and as I went by the road from out farm in the right lane, I could see a pickup going VERY slowly in the merge lane two over to my left and a bit ahead. He started into the right traffic lane, which I thought was odd at his speed, as there was still several hundred yards ahead of him to get to speed, but two lanes over on a near empty road, what's the big deal? What I did not realize is that he had leaned fairly hard on the loud pedal in the snow covered merge lane and, as a pickup in 2WD will do, lost traction. He made no effort to countersteer, so I started to brake a bit and moved onto the snow covered shoulder as he was now very close ahead, but still two lanes over (going on three).
When he hit bare pavement, he was at about 40/45 degrees to road direction and immediately shot across all 4 lanes. By then, I was already in the ditch in some Ninja avoidance move, but snow not deep enough to slow me much. He came all of the way across and down into the ditch at about 1/3 my speed, his RF corner arriving in the same space as my LF for a pretty hard hit. I think (no, I HOPE to HELL) the Q7 is totalled (will find out later). This was a literally flawless and irreplaceable vehicle.
Battle #1 will be the insurance company. Here, we are not living in a real world, but a throwback place where the only insurance you can buy is from the government. Socialists hate success, so if you are driving a premium car of any kind, and especially if you have something exceptional in value/condition, you are going to get screwed. I paid a healthy premium to get what we have, and I already feel like the fair haired 20 year old going to prison for the first time.
I am dreading what I must go through, first to settle, and second to try to replace something that I have about a snowball's chance in hell to duplicate.
Younger daughter was scheduled to have our 4fth Grandson on Valentine's Day, so on Wednesday I was wrapping up things around here to head over to Edmonton for the event. On the list was to head to town to move a trailer around the yard and pick up a quote and drawings for some CNC crane wheel tires to do my own version of trolleys and end trucks. Jumped in her Q7 and headed to town just before 09:00 to avoid the 08:00 crazies on commute. Sure enough, very light traffic and as I went by the road from out farm in the right lane, I could see a pickup going VERY slowly in the merge lane two over to my left and a bit ahead. He started into the right traffic lane, which I thought was odd at his speed, as there was still several hundred yards ahead of him to get to speed, but two lanes over on a near empty road, what's the big deal? What I did not realize is that he had leaned fairly hard on the loud pedal in the snow covered merge lane and, as a pickup in 2WD will do, lost traction. He made no effort to countersteer, so I started to brake a bit and moved onto the snow covered shoulder as he was now very close ahead, but still two lanes over (going on three).
When he hit bare pavement, he was at about 40/45 degrees to road direction and immediately shot across all 4 lanes. By then, I was already in the ditch in some Ninja avoidance move, but snow not deep enough to slow me much. He came all of the way across and down into the ditch at about 1/3 my speed, his RF corner arriving in the same space as my LF for a pretty hard hit. I think (no, I HOPE to HELL) the Q7 is totalled (will find out later). This was a literally flawless and irreplaceable vehicle.
Battle #1 will be the insurance company. Here, we are not living in a real world, but a throwback place where the only insurance you can buy is from the government. Socialists hate success, so if you are driving a premium car of any kind, and especially if you have something exceptional in value/condition, you are going to get screwed. I paid a healthy premium to get what we have, and I already feel like the fair haired 20 year old going to prison for the first time.
I am dreading what I must go through, first to settle, and second to try to replace something that I have about a snowball's chance in hell to duplicate.
