Thumping race with fate

In one view, every heartbeat brings you closer to death. I tend to agree.
Sometimes, though, a heartbeat doesn't count against you; I think of this state as Tuba Time--time spent living behind a tuba exists outside the natural allotment.
And then there's Screaming Turbo Time: when the tires and turbo are trying to outscream each other and the pulse rate--even mine--actually elevates some, but instead of being life-negative or -neutral, Screaming Turbo Time adds heartbeats--good ones, not superhuman efforts to sustain a vegetable (although, come to think of it, Screaming Turbo Time might be a direct route to vegetable time)--to the end.

So, aglow after a killer burger/shake at a well-loved and highly-recommended place, I was engaging in some Screaming Turbo Time therapy.
As I rounded out a corner, leaving four lines of rubber, I discovered a new sort of time, wherein Screaming Turbo Time counts as exponentially negative.

Back up a bit: dropping into the canyon, I dropped out of a layer of snow, but I did not drop out of gravel on the road until I crossed the state line, at which point I dropped out of any form of road maintenance. In years past, they've been good about minimizing gravel and maximizing the spray, and I had been doing fairly well not getting into trouble with ball-bearing layers of gravel. Coming out of the canyon is always faster because it's harder to slow down with the brakes than by letting off the gas. So I was pushing pretty hard on the climb out. And here's a pile of rocks that froze off the bank and rolled across the road.

Ordinarily, rocks wouldn't be a problem--just jig around them. Heh.
Not so easy in a fully loaded turn with no room to ease (or just jerk) to the outside, which would be the logical way to miss the big rock headed for the crankcase (most of the undercarriage danglers are on the passenger side, and I was making a right turn), but jigging to the outside would send me outside the road and into an aerodynamic experiment I would not expect to win. Or pass (whisper: i.e. survive).

Stand on the brakes, haul the wheel right, hope to avoid critical components, and discover the real problem: a matted layer of pine needles. Wet pine needles. Well, once-wet pine needles that froze and have a new life as WRX-calibre ice skates.
We are now moving rapidly toward the cliff with an extremely cattywhompus sort of sensation as the front end slides and momentum carries the back end through the turn for a moment, coupled with the creation of a diamond the exact size and shape of my rectum.
Let off the brakes, the front wheels correct, the rocks slide past, and I'm somehow in control again, blinking my way through a reconstruction and not coming up with much.

Here's where the fate thing comes in: two turns later, while still coasting toward "normal" speeds, I saw bears. A fat mama and cub, waddling straight toward me in the middle of the road. It would've been hard to miss, but I could have were I moving at a more characteristic pace. Rather, had I not been in the WRX, they would've had time to waddle into a turn that already just about wiped me out. And that--which is what actually gave me the stomach-sinking wilies, would have made for a very different story.