True or Not True: the Hummer Adventure

True or Not True is a fun feature we do occasionally where I (Brent) tell a story. It might be true, it might all be totally made up, or it might be part true. That's for you to figure out. This time we are offering a prize for whoever gets the closest to the right answer.

(Note: the pics are not real photos of this story. We didn't take any pics. I just found these on the Internet to give you an idea of what this all looked like.)

At a magazine I started with some other guys, we decided to get a HUMMER for promotional purposes and wrap it with graphics and a big logo.

We went down to the only local dealer that sold them and told them we wanted a black one. The manager said they didn’t have any on the lot but could get one in from another location in a couple of days.

“In the meantime” he said, “why don’t you take the demo loaner we have and drive it for a day or two.” No doubt this was to keep us interested and help us not change our mind. “Have you ever seen what these things can do? You would be amazed.”

“No” I said, “I haven’t driven one. Are you saying it’s okay for us to take it off road and try it out?” The manager was unaware that I was in the Army for a decade and knew what the military Hummers were capable of.

“Sure” the dealer smiled. “That’s what the demo is for. If you go off down by the river, over just west of here, there are some great areas to offroad. You know where I’m talking about?”

I did. “And you don’t care if we take it there and test it out?” I asked.

“Nope. Just try not to tear it up. It’s covered by insurance but any damage you cause by hitting a tree or something, you’ll be responsible for. If anything happens structurally because of being off road, that’s our problem. These things are supposed to handle some pretty rough terrain.” They SURE are, I thought with a devilish twinge.

“Sounds great” I replied, excited. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow and we look forward to getting the black one in a couple of days”. And with that, me and a couple of guys were off to have some fun in a demo Hummer, covered by insurance with the blessing of the manager to “test it out”. Could there be anything more primed for an adventure? Or a disaster?

The offroad area he described was actually back behind a Lowe’s that sit near (a couple hundred yards or more) a bend in the local river and there was probably a hundred acres or so of woods, sand bar and washed out gullies accessible from the very back corner of the Lowe’s parking lot. Evidently it was a well known offroading area because the paths that led off the Lowe’s parking lot and into the woods had plenty of fresh tracks.

At first I was pretty cautious. A Hummer is a big vehicle and it’s hard to get the feel for how wide and tall it is. This commercial model (H2) was a different proportion than the military version, sitting up higher and more narrow. I daintily went down a few trails that really any pickup truck could have negotiated with no problem. After a while the landscape opened up as we neared the river, and combined with my growing familiarity with the Hummer, we started to have some fun.

Over big mounds, straddling deep gullies, up steep hills, through the mud and silt, mowing down brush and small seedling trees… I’m sure I wasn’t pushing the Hummer to nearly what it was capable because it did all this without even using the four wheel drive or low gears. Then… we went around a bend, and there it was: a real test.

Before us lied about 60 yards of mush… standing water, oozing mud, a couple of deep muck and mud filled depressions, a steep muddy bank that was capped off with some big rocks. We paused for a second, more to consider our own bravery than the Hummer capabilities, but like all good testosterone filled male-idiots with a new toy, the consideration was never in depth or for very long. Off we went….

We plough through a couple of wet spots and over a big gully before arriving at a big standing mud pit that looked every bit like swamp bog but filled with thick, goopey slop. There were other tire tracks leading into, around and apparently through this area so you know us boys, “if they did it, then our Hummer can do it.”

We plowed into the middle of the mud bog and got stuck only a few feet into it. There was mud all the way up to the bottom of our doors which on a Hummer is about two and half or three feet from the ground. No worries… I realized we weren’t even in four wheel drive yet. So I shifted to four wheel drive. No luck. Tires were spinning off and on as the Hummer tried to disperse and divert power to the ones that were not. I let off the gas. Okay, what next? I actually got the manual out of the glove box and quickly read up on the different gears available – probably should have done that BEFORE we started.

I shifted the Hummer to its lower four wheel drive gears and settings which would give us maximum power, slower tire rotations, dispersion of power equally… the optimum configuration possible. Nothing. The Hummer wouldn’t budge. The mud had grabbed the vehicle like a giant sucker and the more we tried to move, the tighter its grip became as it packed in around us. What’s more, the engine started to sputter and wasn’t accelerating properly when you gave it gas. That really worried us because this machine was supposed to be able to deal with crossing through water, mud, dirt, sand, whatever… not only were we stuck, the engine was acting up. I started to get a little nervous. We were NOT getting out of there alone, that much was for sure.

I called one of the guys from the office who I knew had a big truck himself. “Mike, hey I’m out here behind Lowe’s in the Hummer. You know where I’m talking about?” He did. “Well, I got into a huge mud hole and we are stuck. The engine is acting up too. Can you come and pull us out with your truck?”… “No, I’ve tried four wheel drive, and the low gears; no luck”… “I’m not sure about the engine, it’s just sputtering and acting weird”…. “Not yet, there’s no water or mud inside. We haven’t tried to open the doors or get out. The mud is up to the bottom of the doors though”… “Okay, hurry. We aren’t going anywhere.”

A half hour passed and we finally see Mike coming into the area in his big four wheel drive. He stops at the edge of the mud pit, gets out and heads to the back of his truck to get something to pull us out with. He appears with something orange in color.

“What the heck is that?” I hollered out my window.

“A long extension cord.” If he wouldn’t have been standing there in plain sight holding it, I would have never believed it.

“Are you out of your mind????” I yelled across to him. “Do you really think that is going to pull this monster out of this mud hole? You might as well have brought dental floss!”

“Well, it’s all I had” Mike explained. “I figured we double it up or something. I didn’t realize how bad you were stuck.”

An extension cord. That would not have pulled a bicycle out of the mud without breaking. “Go back to Lowe’s and by a heavy chain. I’ll pay for it” I told him.

Another half hour passed and Mike returned with the chain. I crawled through the Hummer and got out on the back bumper. Mike threw the end of the chain to me. Luckily, he actually bought a “tow chain” so it had those hooks with clips on the end. I ran it around the heavy bumper and secured it to the towing frame on the Hummer.

“Mike, put your truck in the lowest gear and pull us out SLOWLY. Otherwise, we’ll both be stuck.”

I got back in the drivers seat, set the lowest gear, put it in reverse, and waved at Mike. Between his truck and the sputtering power of the Hummer, we inched the beast out of the mud pit and onto solid ground. We unhooked the chain and drove back to the Lowe’s parking lot. Obviously something was wrong with the Hummer. By the time we hit pavement on the parking lot, not only did the engine sound weird, THE BRAKES DIDN’T WORK. The brake pedal had gotten softer and softer as we drove back to civilization and finally they were dead. Nothing. I had to use the emergency brake and low gears to slow down and stop. This was getting really fun now, and probably expensive.

“Listen” I told the other two guys with me, “there is a car wash just down the street. I will drive really slow, and we can use the low gears and emergency brake to stop. We have to get this thing cleaned up and back to our office or we are going to get hammered by the dealer with a big repair bill.” It was around 7pm, so traffic was light, and we had no problem getting to the car wash although, looking back, driving a HUMMER on city streets with no brakes was not one of my more wisdom-filled moments.

Between us, we spent almost $20 and an hour washing mud from the Hummer. Thick, drying mud was in EVERYTHING. The wheel wells were packed, the underneath, the drive train… it was amazing how much mud there was. I opened up the hood and figured out the cause of the engine trouble. The entire engine compartment was cover in mud though I couldn’t really figure out how, or why that would be affecting the engine, but obviously it was. We hosed off the engine for what seemed like an eternity but the engine still sputtered. We would have to take our chances with the dealer.

As we were hosing out the inside/underneath of the wheels, it became obvious why we did not have brakes. One of the brake hydraulic lines was broken loose and a few drops of the remaining fluid was hanging on for dear life at the end of the line. We must have caught a rock or fallen tree limb or something. Just our luck.

After an hour of washing, mud was still finding its way out of the cracks and crevices. It was going to be dark soon so we needed to get the truck back to our office for the night.

“Okay guys, get in” I told them. “I’ll be careful.” We go off down the road taking a less traveled route back to the office. At one point, I near a right hand turn and was going a little faster than I should. I look left and a car was coming… no time to gear down and I didn’t want to lock up the wheels with the emergency brake, so I look right and see a pretty wide open area up on the curb off the side of the road. I pulled right, hopped the curb and looked every bit like an idiot with a big boy toy driving on the sidewalk/grass next to a city road. I just hoped it wasn’t a cop coming by.

The oncoming car I was avoiding pulled alongside, and I kid you not, rolled down the window to expose a car load of what appeared to be high school boys. “Hummer Dude!!!”, they yelled giving us the thumbs up. One car load of idiots encouraging what appeared (appeared?) to be another car load of idiots. They thought we were just “offroading” down the side walk, showing off in our Hummer. It was the perfect ending of our adventure.

Since we knew the dealer would be closed by now, we decided at that point to go an extra mile or two and get it back to his lot when no one was there so that we could avoid the embarrassment of driving up the next day in a still-mud-dripping Hummer with no brakes. Oh, I didn’t tell you. This Hummer was WHITE… so every mud drip looked like chocolate syrup oozing down. We arrived without further incident and parked it for the night to await our fate at the coming dawn.

To make a long story short, we went back the next day and told the dealer the truth about what happened. He found it pretty amusing and told us he would let us know what would happen next after his mechanics looked things over. Come to find out, someone who had serviced the Hummer had left a large cover off an air intake under the hood and mud had been sucked straight into the engine. Bye bye engine. Totally gone. They had to replace it but it was not our fault. The broken brake line was determined to just be something that “happened” while offroading, and we were told we could take the vehicle offroad, so we weren’t on the hook for that either. I have a feeling they did the math and figured they would make more money by selling us a new Hummer than they would be dinging us for repair bills.

All in all, our only cost was the $20 at the car wash and the humiliation of getting stuck.

We never took OUR new Hummer offroading. It was against official company policy.

But we did keep a nice, long, heavy extension cord in the back in case we needed to pull someone else out of trouble.

True? Not True? Partially True? What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know.

The winner (whoever gets closest to the truth) will get their name and link listed on our blog along with instant worldwide fame, and your choice of one of my books, or a photo art gift (www.brentriggsphoto.com).