You never know what will happen along the way to a new catalog..

Our last big trip of 2011 was a monster, approximately 4,450 miles. Of that tally, over 400 miles were added to detour past a friend's house who had been talking about a number of items that he was going to sell. My primary interest was a small but particularly nice lot of British campaign medals.  We had purchased a number of British campaign medals from him in the past, and these were the ones that he had held back to keep.  The last ones to go are usually the very best, so I was eager to see what he had to sell. 

After passing the point of no return on the detour, I received a phone call from my friend. He told me that he had decided against selling the medals, but would still have things for me to look at.  He mentioned several items, but "Soviet and East German hats" was all that I heard, ringing in my head like some big bell, tolling doom for a deal that had actually seemed rather promising, right up until that moment.  It was too late to turn back and go the shorter way, so I continued on with hope that some of the other items would still make a 400+ mile detour worthwhile.

We met, talked about relics and collecting for a short while, and it was clear that a deal on the good medals was just not going to happen. We're friends, though, so as it was getting late I figured at the very least we would go have a good meal and visit, whether there was any worthwhile business to transact or not. Rather than ride in the AGM box truck -always fun to park at a crowded restaurant-, he offered to drive his family SUV.

Our first choice was getting ready to close up, so we struck out in search of alternatives. As we zipped along the very busy divided four-lane highway, a car pulled out of a gas station making a left turn across traffic - turning left, looking right, and not looking left at all. Fortunately for the driver of that car, my friend saw it in time and swerved, preventing what would very likely have been a life-threatening highway speed impact against her driver side door. Instead, we received a stout but glancing strike on our passenger door, which is a curious thing to watch evolve from the perspective of the passenger seat, where the only things you can try to control in the whole affair are your own bladder and bowels.  This impact lifted our vehicle up on two wheels. We continued down the road in that precarious movie stunt configuration for what seemed like a rather long time, but was actually just a few dozen meters until the truck dropped back down on all four tires in the middle of the next intersection. It spun around in a big crazy circle, sputtered, and died.

We could clearly hear the sick crunching sounds as bits and pieces that had broken off of the two vehicles were pulverized under the wheels of other traffic that weaved wildly around us with horns blaring, trying to avoid us and the bigger chunks of debris in the road. As soon as we counted all of our fingers and toes, and confirmed to one another that we were both ok, my friend looked over at me and said "You know, I think I'm ready to sell those medals now."

True to his word, within half an hour after the tow truck dropped us off back at the house, we were doing business on a number of the interesting items that you will find on Catalog 93!  Folks often ask us "how do you get all of that cool stuff?"  There are times.. well, you just wouldn't believe me it I told you.

(Nobody was injured in our little adventure, and we got to meet all kinds of nice folks.  Never did get supper, though.)