Before I get into this post, happy St. Patrick’s Day from all of us writers here at Hooniverse!

My car isn’t green, nor was the  shirt I had on when I got pulled over in rural Oklahoma…in fact I don’t have a blip of Irish in my family history. For whatever reason though, I’ve had some sort of “luck” with the law. Three years ago, I participated in a week-long road rally with Rally North America. Driving down historic Route 66 with 50 other cars from across the United States and Canada, raising thousands of dollars for breast cancer research. The more than 3,000 mile adventure was filled with challenging checkpoints, lots of new friendships, nightly partying, sweet rides, and constant exploration of unfamiliar terrain. It was an absolute blast.

During the third day of the 2010 Route 66 Rally, my best friend John and I got…a little lost trying to find a checkpoint. Frustration over the a lack of GPS signal ensued and our hard-copy maps were becoming more and more useless. We eventually got back on track, finding a desolate road that we thought would take us to our third checkpoint of the day. Here we were in my bright red Camaro with rally decals all over it, rock music blaring out of the windows, no other cars in sight, 80 degree weather….just flying. The speedometer was comfortably resting at 75mph.

Then it happened. As we came to the peak of the hill, a white unmarked Sheriff’s deputy car sat on the right. “Shit we’re done,” I remember saying to John as he pulled out behind us to lay down the law, sirens echoing throughout the country side. Immediately pulling over and shutting off the car, we both looked at each other and jokingly asked which one of our dads would bail us out of jail. After slowly looking around at the outside of my car, the deputy came up and told us he had clocked me at 75mph….in a 45mph zone. Of course we tried talking our way out of it, of course we explained that we were from Wisconsin and didn’t know these roads, and of course we apologized. But the deputy continued to explain that going 30mph over the posted speed limit in the state of Oklahoma is a felony reckless driving. I explained to him we were doing a charity road rally to benefit breast cancer research, which was 100% true and evident by all the vinyl.

Minutes later he returned and said “This one’s on me….which means I’m not gonna write you a ticket. It goes 35 to 45 up to 55, then down to 45 and then back up to 55….just because I ain’t gonna write you one doesn’t mean the next officer will you understand?” I had just gotten away with a verbal warning, for going 30mph over the speed limit. I was amazed and thanked the deputy, who even gave us directions to our next destination. I look back at it now, and think not only how stupid I was for driving that fast, but how lucky I really was for getting just a verbal warning. That’s my luck right there. Pure luck.

So in the spirit of St. Paddy’s day, my question to you Hooniverse readers is….what’s the luckiest thing you’ve had happen to you behind the wheel? I’m sure there are a fair amount of good fun stories to be told on here.