A story of a sick friend and an unusual cure.
Many, many years ago I was out in the hills of the Columbia River Gorge with my (then) girlfriend Candace photographing a sunset and wildflowers when this tall kid looking no older than 17 popped up out of nowhere like a ghost, walked toward me with a smile that could have meant “I’m about to murder you” or “I’m thinking about puppies and like it”, stopped about 3 feet in front of me and said aloud “Hey, are you Adam Dyar?!” While I thought it was kinda cool being recognized by a stranger, I’ve never gotten over the fact that the kid got my name wrong. That kid was Cody Wilson.
It’s been almost 10 years since that incident and we’ve become good friends and have been on a few trips together, but this asshole still got my name wrong when we first met and I think the pain has lingered well into our years of friendship... until I finally got my revenge.
You see, on a tour together in Norway during the frigid winter of 2018 Cody came down with a quite severe cold. The poor guy was miserable but, like the hard working bloke he is, he pushed through and did his job. After about three days of seeing him so sick I went into “concerned big brother” mode. While at a shooting location he opted to stay back and lay down in the van for some much deserved rest. Worried about him, I asked if he was keeping hydrated. He replied that he hadn’t been consuming enough water, so I quickly went to grab him a bottle of water but unfortunately we were out of stock. Luckily though a couple days previously I had noticed a big jug of water, with one of those built in nozzle spouts, in the back of one of the vans. So to help my buddy out, I grabbed one of my empty bottles, took it to the jug of water, filled it to the brim, and demanded with tough-love that Cody drink as much of it has he could. Problem solved, right? No, problem NOT solved.
A few minutes after giving my friend this water, he jumped out of the van where he was trying to rest, walked straight at me and said “Dude, what the hell did you give me?” Cue my confusion. “Whatever you gave me isn’t water. It’s disgusting. I’ve never tasted anything like this.” He was green and looked as if he might puke right at my feet. I told him “I just got water from the big jug in the back of the van! It’s not water?!” At this point our local Norwegian friend Arild Heitmann was walking up towards the vehicles to grab his gloves from one of the vans and overheard our conversation. Arild inquisitively asked “wait... what happened?” I told him I’d given Cody water from the water jug in the back of the van and Arild burst into a fit of laughter. “Dude, that was diesel exhaust fluid!” I glanced at Cody, he’s clearly very alarmed about what he had just ingested “Dude, am I gonna die??”
I frantically grabbed for my phone to google what the main ingredients are in diesel exhaust fluid. Luckily he hadn’t actually swallowed any of it... unluckily the key ingredient is a little something called Urea. Does that sound like any other words you might know? Maybe it sounds like Urine? Yes, Urea is the same stuff as your pee essentially. I made Cody drink piss. He hasn’t called me Adam since.
This photo is from that trip.