Ode to my Kadoo

The first car I ever bought was a 1986 Chevrolet Cavalier, POS (piece of shit). This car transported me and my buddies all around south eastern Saskatchewan and Southwestern Manitoba. For a couple of years, and it was home to a lot of great stories from my youth.

The trunk was packed with stereo equipment and under the hood was a special tank with a flow-line to the cab which was used as a juice dispenser. It was in sync with the windshield washer switch so when I pushed the button, the fluid of choice would pour into a cup in the glove compartment. Unfortunately, anything that foamed could not be used in this, but it was great for bush parties, I had a DJ stand and a wet bar on 4 wheels.

How it came to be known as the Kadoo is:

The worst snowfall we had seen that year came one weekend when everyone I knew was around, so we decided to rent three hotel rooms and host a party, that way no one had to drive, and we all had a piece of floor to sleep on at the end of the night. This was at the Silvermoon. Now it is common local knowledge that the piece of real-estate between the highway and the service road was called the "Silvermoon Express". It was a ditch basically, not even a really steep one, but it was fun for scaring the crap out of passengers. On a whim Ferg and I jumped in and decided to try and set a record for distance traveled through the "Silvermoon Express", while it was buried in about 3 feet of snow.

We got to the highway, that was so covered that we almost got stuck turning around, and we judged the distance it would take to gain enough speed to clear the snow wall. We had our hockey gear so we put on the helmets and seatbelts and hit er.

The entire party was sitting outside now waiting for us to get stuck in a ditch looking like imbeciles. I was going to go one better. We got to our required speed (I won't say what it was), and at the choice moment I veered into the ditch. White. All we could see was the snow flying up over the hood. I was still making forward progress and suddenly a light appeared through the windshield. Ferg yells "POST" and I slam on the brakes (not that it mattered since my wheels were basically dragging in the snow.

When the dust (or snow) settled we looked out to find we had come about 10 feet short of the target. The light I saw was indeed a post, but it was another 50 feet away.
"Damn Ferg, we cudda made er!"

We were stuck and my vehicle cleared a path in the snow where the underside had dragged all the way through. All the "experts" said that it was a miracle we got that far.

That was the night my POS car became dubbed "the Kadoo". A spinoff of SkiDoo as it would be pronounced by someone who sustained a head injury, or had a speech impediment. How fitting.