As I was on my way back from visiting with the fam in New Jersey, I moved into the left lane of the New Jersey Turnpike to overtake a slower car. At the time, I was doing roughly 85 mph.

As I passed the slower car, and moved back to the right lane, I heard a strange noise come from my left rear quarter panel. Let’s back up a couple of months…

I was at my apartment complex, leaving to run some errands when I started backing up. Just as I thought to myself, “I should probably check my mirror to see how close the Acura MDX parked behind me is,” I bumped into it pretty hard.

I inspected the MDX, and it was fine. Not even a scratch on the paint. My bumper, however, was slightly cracked. And, it looked like the seam of the rear bumper and the rear quarter panel wasn’t aligned properly. I popped it back in place and problem solved – or so I thought.

Ever since that day, every once and a while, I would hear something that sounded like tree branches hitting my car. But, I never paid attention to the sounds. Well, I never really thought about them beyond wondering what they were.

Fast forward to today. I heard the strange loud noise as I moved back into the right lane on the turnpike. I also caught a glimpse of something in my side view mirror. I assumed I ran over a tire tread in the road. But, when I looked in my rear view mirror, I didn’t see the tread behind me.

I moved all the way over to the right lane. As cars passed me, everyone was looking at my car, which was a good indicator that something was up.

I took the next exit and pulled over. Sure enough, the wind caught my already-cracked bumper and ripped the whole quarter panel off. It was hanging by about two inches of fiberglass.

Lucky for me, there was a Walgreen just down the road – duct tape should do the trick. Of course, Walgreen had every color but blue. So, I picked up “transparent” tape and taped up the bumper in the parking lot. Transparent my butt, it might as well have been white. But, it did the trick.

Wind 1, Duct Tape 1, Japanese engineering 0.