An underwear-clad Norwegian man clung to a speeding car's roof in freezing weather to stop a thief

Keep your gotdamn hands off his Volkswagen.

THIS MAN IS BASICALLY NORWEGIAN DAREDEVIL

It's really hard to hang onto the roof of a moving car. I know this because I have done it at 40 miles per hour for like, twenty seconds once. It was a  long twenty seconds. After the first three or four seconds of wheeeeeee you realize that you are in fact on the roof of a car, a place without any clear points of grip or contact or carriage. People aren't supposed to be up there. Engineers did not plan for you to be up there.

You did not really plan to be up there, but a few drinks later and there you go, you're on the roof of a car. A friend tried it on the way out of my driveway and got up to 45 mph before falling off onto the asphalt. He looked like hamburger with a smile the next day but still went to school. No, he didn't go to the doctor. Yes, I grew up in Tennessee.

It's hard, is my point, even if you had a ski rack on the station wagon. Staying on a car moving in a straight line is hard. If the car turned at all, the grip required to stay on is basically unpaid stunt work without a crash pad in sight for a safe landing. He's in his underwear and is not, as far as we know, a paid stuntperson, or even an unpaid one.

It was really, really cold. Please spare me the "oh he's Norwegian and used to that" shit. It was one degree above zero and he was in his underwear. No one is used to that or will ever be used to that.

In case you do not understand how cold one degree above zero is, or have not experienced it lately: it feels like a thousand tiny beavers gnawing at your flesh. It sends signals to your brain that you need to eat the blubber out of a seal carcass and find a warm place to sleep until things get better in this cold, lifeless world. If you just lay down to take that nap without building a fire first, one degree above zero will kill you.

He was on the roof of the car AND it was really cold. Using the assuredly accurate calculations of something I definitely didn't find on the Internet, moving at 53 miles an hour in one degree temperatures equals a man in his underwear clinging to a trapeze bar in a wind tunnel set at 35 degrees below zero.

HE WAS UP THERE FOR ONE MILE. The man clung to the top of the thing for at least a minute and a half of constant effort, which is much, much longer than you think it is. It -- and the standing around afterwards, too -- were enough to give him frostbite on two of his toes. Oh, about those toes. They were attached to his knee via his leg, and they are an important part of the next part of this story.

He kneed a window open while hanging on to the back of a car. I have so many improbable escape plans I know I could not do. For instance, there are three or four buildings I have elaborate acrobatic exit plans from: down the curved glass front, onto the awning, rebounding off the fabric and into the softest dumpster in the alley. I'd get out of the Vox offices in D.C. by swinging off a flagpole and then swinging back through the glass of a lower level. All of these seem plausible in my head, and in reality they all end with my grisly but hilarious death. I know this, and admit it.

This man, though: this man could do it. He actually did what you said you'd do in this situation. He kneed his way through the back window while clinging to the car, and then crawled bleeding through the broken glass to have a word with the man who stole his car.

Oh, and he kneed his way through a car window. Have you ever broken a car window? You have to do it with something pointed, something with a point, and definitely not with something as big and dumb and blunt as a knee. Talk to every idiot friend of yours who ever got really emotional and decided to punch their way through a car window. It's much harder to do than you think, and much, much more painful than anticipated. Unless your knees are cyborg icepicks, do not do this.*

*He's Norwegian. This might be a possibility.

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He confronted a stranger who stole his car and got it back. In his underwear. This makes much more sense when you imagine the horror of a bloody man in his boxer briefs crawling like the girl from The Ring through the back window and backseat, and then asking you to pull the car over and give it back to him. You would have given the car back, too, and run for your life afterwards. (Not that it would have mattered: he caught the man and held him until police got to the scene. This random Norwegian is a frostbitten Sentinel robot sent to humble humanity.)

He did all this for a $492 Volkswagen Passat. A station wagon, though. This is the only part of the entire story that makes sense, because a good reliable station wagon is worth re-enacting a fight scene from The Raid 2 in your undies while clinging to the top of a moving automobile. For the record, the Norwegian Police do not recommend catching a criminal this way. I do. You should do this. This is legal advice and you should totally do this.