Those unfamiliar sounds, no matter how slight, and sudden new "feel" on the road, no matter how benign, seem to put my heart in my throat on any car I've ever owned. Have you ever been driving along, relaxed, enjoying the road and scenery, with passanger beside you and heard a funny new sound??? that turns out to be the passenger dinging something in their purse you didn't notice... and you say WHAT WAS THAT???.... foot immediately off the accelerator, body tense, adrenaline flowing, all senses tingling, jaw taught, muscles flexed to near Hurculean level.
It takes about 10 minutes to cool back down to a level of normalcy, and another hr to get all the way back down to the formerly relaxed level.... AFTER your female passanger shouts screams epithets (all unprintable here) and calls you names that sailors don't even use for 'scaring her to death'.
I even have my ol' '65 Chevy C20.... and know every squeek & thunk but when I hear a new sound (somebody pounding on a nail head as you drive by but don't notice is occurring, for example)... same thing happens... "ohmygawdmyenginebitthedust" or "oh****[or worse]myrearendgaveout"... split second worst case scenario's forge thru your thoughts, followed immediately by images of writing big checks where you hardly have enough room on the line to write "& no/100's".
So I can really appreciate and emphathize with what you went thru with a real thunk/thunk repeating, rythmic sound eminating from your wheel.
You'ed think, perhaps, that with age, wisdom, and years and years of driving experience under our belts we'ed have learned to control those autonomic flight/fight reflex responses to a little unfamilair noise we for some reason associate, illogically, with the transport we're driving at the time. I mean maybe if it was a single engine airplane it might make sense... but a 4 wheels on the ground vehicle?
I'm still perplexed at why I respond the way I do.... I'm really a hang-loose, devil may care, live and let live kind of 60's adolescence period guy most of the time, save for my wife's hitting a carefully chosen butten now and then for effect and her entertainment.
Longtooth
67 250SL US #113-043-10-002163
'02 SL500 Sport
