Crash

I recently adopted the name Crash from a man on our third date....A relatively traditional Bostonian, 41, never married, or lived outside New England. His idea of a girlfriend was a "buddy to watch the game with on a cold Sunday afternoon and wrap his Mom's Christmas presents."

I'll call him Charlestown Man since all the men in Charlestown look and sound the same to me. He has a family to die for however, including a spirited 60 something year old mom who snowmobiles, skiis and hikes. When we arrived at his parent’s fully winterized lakeside house in Newfound Lake NH, I dressed myself in his mother’s helmut, long johns, and a Scottish wooley.

We had to pour snow on the driveway since the snowmobiles were still on an old trailer and the pavement was bare.......the bank clock reported minus 4 on the temperature gauge on our way into town.

Suddenly Charlestown Man threw a high school comment my way – “most girls I’ve brought up here choose not to drive or if they do, they drive like “wimps.” Maintain your feminine diplomatic energy I kept saying to myself. Internally, I was thinking - "give me that damn thing."

Eager to get behind the wheel of this beautiful machine, my adrenaline was pumping from the roar of the motor, the speed of the engine, and the jumps over the hills. I don't recall these machines purring quite like this in the 1970s when I zipped around with my male cousins on the Great Sacandaga Lake in upstate NY.

Trails, trails, trails. Beautiful trails and yet, all trails come to an end eventually. Charlestown Man never showed me how to break and hell, I never asked. What do they call women like me at a time like this?

60 miles an hour and the trail was heading into a highway. He didn't intervene and well, I never discovered where the break was. We flew across the highway through several trees and snowbanks, stopping abruptly between two thin birch trees. The force threw us both off the snowmobile, which rolled before I realized my foot was stuck beneath it and Charlestown Man’s helmut and face was covered in blood. Luckily, someone saw the "crash" and brought us to a minute farmhouse where the “mom” gave us ice bags for our bloody noses and bruised heads.

Charlestown Man remained endearing despite his scar and stitches and for the next month addressed me as "Crash." The lesson here? I think I'd rather avoid the truth on this one and simply say that snowmobiles are dangerous things to play with, or perhaps that when an alpha-female meets an alpha-male, she is destined to become his buddy rather than his lover.