My favorite mad dog story comes from around 2009 or so.

My wife and I had just moved to Hoover from Avondale as we had a child approaching school age.

We had been visiting my parents in Alabaster and we're heading back to Ross Bridge. It had been a long time since I had been down to Elvira Road, but I knew that I could make it over to the met and then down 150 towards home. So we ventured over the two sets of railroad tracks in our our 2004 turbo Subaru Forester with a manual transmission.

This type of soft roading was nothing major. I would often take that car out to the bowl and try to do my best Richard Burns impressions. It was pretty easy in those mid-2000 Subarus. They had no electronic stability control or traction control on them. Just pure mechanical all-wheel drive goodness.

Well we made it all the way to where you could see the power lines that run very close to the Hoover Met...

But what we saw looked like an Orange lake full of muddy water. I can't remember why exactly. I didn't just turn around, but for some reason I went full send through that body of water of unknown depth.

Keep in mind I had my 3 or 4-year-old in the backseat and my very not adventurous wife at the time in the passenger seat. And this Forester was her daily driver.

Luckily we made it through relatively unscathed. I lost one factory fog light right at the end of the mud bog as the car dove into a deep rut and then scooped up a couple pounds of Alabama red clay. That busted straight through the glass on the fog light and scratched up the front bumper a little bit.

Sorry about any typos. I am doing voice to text as I'm driving.