His dejected girlfriend informs him that a drag racer who had appeared on a well-known reality TV program had perished in a horrific vehicle crash.
On Saturday night in southwest Texas, Nathan Schaldach, who plays Cali Nate on the Discovery series Street Outlaws, crashed.
In a tragic Facebook post, his girlfriend Courtney Paulshock confirmed his passing and referred to him as her “soul mate.”
“I’m not whole.” On Sunday, she wrote, “I’m completely shocked.”
“I feel like my heart is breaking.”
According to Paulshock, this occurred while Schaldach was racing at Eagle Pass, which is located roughly two hours west of San Antonio.
Despite assisting him in traveling to the hospital, his friends were powerless to save his life.
Paulshock claimed that she was unwilling to provide any further details regarding the cause of the Schaldach crash or its preceeding events.
His girlfriend commented, “Seeing his mom and sister again made him so happy.”
“Outside, he pursued his passions.”
“To know the kind of love that Nathan gave me and showed me on a daily basis was a true blessing.”
Schaldach appeared in the fourth season of the television program Street Outlaws: Fastest in America, which followed eight drag racing teams as they battled for a $100,000 prize.
His season concluded in May of last year.
The original Street Outlaws, which featured insane street racers risking their lives to participate, served as the inspiration for the current program.
Drag racing involves two cars racing on a short, straight track toward a finish line.
Since street racing is so deadly, most jurisdictions have outlawed it, despite the fact that professional sports are generally safe.
In 2022, while filming Street Outlaws, Ryan Fellows, an actor on the show, lost his life in a car accident. Schaldach passed away after that.
The driver’s car overturned and caught fire in a Las Vegas race. According to a Discovery spokesperson, the loss devastated the network.
The U.S. Sun has contacted Texas police to inquire further about Nate’s collision.
“Never love someone again”
Online, Schaldach’s friends and admirers expressed their sorrow and condolences upon his unexpected passing.
Chris Frank, a friend of Schaldach’s, claimed that after learning the awful news, he barely slept at all.
“Those of you who raced him feared him, and those of you who were friends with him loved him,” Frank was heard saying in a Facebook video.
We all know that any ride could be our last, and every race is dangerous.
“One of the last genuine racers with a genuine love and comprehension for the sport was Nate.”
In one of his saddest farewell emails, Paulshock promised Schaldach that she would love him forever.
“Garth told me to tell you I love you very much just in case tomorrow never comes,” he texted his girlfriend. The driver’s final race ever was this one.
Paulshock added, “Please wake me up from this nightmare,” below a screenshot of the text exchange.
She also shared Lady Gaga’s song “I’ll Never Love Again” from the film A Star Is Born later that same day.
Matt Heath: My parting message: Enjoy things while they are around
A lot of big, tragic and important things have happened to this wonderful country of ours since April 2014. None of which I have covered. I was too busy writing about hungover parenting, ancient philosophy and my dog Colin.
Out of the 536 columns I have written, 27 were about that guy. Far too few. He is such a good boy, he deserves an article a week.
Today is the end of an era for me, and whenever these final events pop up in our lives, we can’t help but think about the ultimate end.
Everything we do, we will one day do for the last time. That’s why you have to enjoy things while they are around. It’s not just big events like leaving a job, house or loved one either. Whatever moment you happen to be in now, you will never get it back, and you don’t know how many more you have.
Everything we do in life, from eating pizza to spending time with the people we love, to driving, writing, drinking or breathing, we will one day experience for the final time. It might happen tomorrow. This can be either a depressing or an inspiring thought, depending on how you look at it.
A few years back in this column, I interviewed professor of philosophy William B Irvine, of Wright State University, Ohio, on this very topic. He put it this way on a Zoom call: “Recognition of the impermanence of everything in life can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. The only way we can be truly alive is if we make it our business periodically to entertain thoughts of the end.”
Today’s column is very meaningful to me because it is my last. Like the last night with a lover before she goes overseas. And just like a lover, there have been some half-arsed efforts put in from me over the years. Last week, for example, I spent 750 words moaning about how bad my cricket team is. But the truth is that any of my columns could have been the final. If I had reminded myself every week for the past 10 years that the end is inevitable, I may have been more grateful for having a column and appreciated writing them all as much as I am this one.
While everything we do could have more meaning with a focus on finitude, some things are inherently more worthwhile than others. There is no doubt my column “The pros and cons of wearing Speedos” from November 2022 was less meaningful than most things in this world. That was a waste of everyone’s time. So, if we only have so much time, how do we pick the best things to do?
Well, Oliver Burkeman, the author of Four Thousand Weeks – Time Management For Mortals, suggested this to me in a 2022 column: “Ask yourself, does this choice enlarge me? You usually know on some unspoken level if it does. That’s a good way to distinguish between options.”
With that in mind, I don’t feel great about my 2018 article on “New Zealand’s best hole”. That didn’t enlarge anyone.
There will be people reading this column right now who have loved my writing in the Herald and are sad to see it end. Others will have hated it and are glad to see me go. Many won’t have any opinion at all. But for those in the first camp, I have good news. I have a book coming out on May 28 called A Life Less Punishing – 13 Ways To Love The Life You Got (Allen and Unwin Book Publishers). It’s a deep dive into the history, philosophy and science of not wasting our time lost in anger, loneliness, humiliation, stress, fear, boredom and all the other ways we find to not enjoy perfectly good lives. It’s available for pre-order right now (google it if you’re interested).
A Life Less Punishing took me two years to write and is equivalent in words to 100 of these columns. Which would be a complete nightmare for those in the hate camp, but as I say, great news for those who want more.
Anyway, thanks to the Herald for having me, thanks to the lovely people who make an effort to say nice things to me about my column nearly every day and thanks to the universe for every single second we get.
Bless!
Leave a Reply