Thing is I was walking out the door to go to work in my picture.... Unless Charlotte has changed a lot in the 9 years since I lived there.... No body's going anywhere there
The cat has just appeared looking like a ball floof with two ears, some suit has discovered hitting 2' of water in his compay Audi at 50mph doesn't end well .... I didn't laugh, honest ....
On Friday when the temperature climbed up to around 10 above freezing, my back porch was completely free of snow... The following pic was taken on Tuesday, but it looked pretty much just like this as of Saturday noonish: Jeff
So where’s the snow tunnels and snow men? My grandmother lived in Michigan and use to SCREAM at us when we we’re tots and would dig tunnels in the snow. She was scared to death the tunnels would cave in and burry us. Don’t know why people are in such a hurry to grow up and be adults. We had a blast when we were kids. Adult hood sucks, business, work, bills, taxes, wives, blah, blah, blah. I’m retired so I get to be a kid again, short of the wife nagging.
We used to dig our tunnels through the big snowbanks the snow plows would leave along the side of the road, so Mom was more worried about us getting cut in two by the next plow than about the tunnels collapsing. It never happened. But I still try to keep the snowblower aimed at just one spot to make a big pile of it (a little farther from the road) when I'm clearing the driveway, that way the kids can burrow all they want without me worrying about that.
Boy oh boy, the stories I could tell you guys about some of the crazy insane stuff we did as kids to occupy ourselves.
That picture above reminds me of a ramp the neighborhood kids built. They put it at the center of a big sloping downhill street nearby, and dared anyone to jump it. I had not been riding bikes very long, but was a natural on a bike, so I decided to give it a whirl. I was on my sister's bike (I did not have one), and it was the step-through frame with full fenders front and back, and wide tires. I hit the ramp at full speed and as soon as I lifted off I had a really bad feeling, and probably looked just like the kid above. I seems like a flew through the air for about 30 minutes before I landed, and when I hit, the front wheel went into a violent oscillation. Luckily I did not panic, and finally got it under control before I hit the curb at the bottom. God was with me on that day, either that or he just does not want me up there, (he would probably permaban me in short order if I did show up). Once you fly up in the air, there is nothing you can do but wait until you land, pray like there is no tomorrow (because there may not be), and hope you don't go splat when you finally come down. It was many years before I listened again to anyone saying "Oh yeah, I bet you can't .........(fill in your own crazy stunt)".
Where I played with my cousins as a kid was named "Hospital Gully" for good reason. Over the years it hosted many a bike stunt, homemade artillery device, a few 100 MPH plus nitro methane fuelled control line stunt planes and eventually a hypergolic rocket motor research program. Most ideas were gleaned from kid's books of the era.
A friend who I hadn't seen for 30+ years reminded me of the day she brought some loading powder (her dad re-loaded) in a crisp(chip) bag and dared me to light it. We were on the roof of a tall slide and I DID! Broken arm from the fall and lots of parents having 'discussions' later I admitted to running down the 12' slide and falling off. Never did explain the cartoon like black face.......
In reference to ramps and stupid ideas, 3rd grade, after school, Our elementary school had a asphalt playground the entire length of the school and half as wide. The playground was every bit of 100 yards x 50 yards. Somebody had built a ramp that was a good 5’ tall. We lived about 10 miles from the school and I road my bike every day to school. My bike was a brand new 10? speed. I seen that ramp and thought, hmmmm. Started at the opposite end of that playground and pumped the peddles for all it was worth. I hit that ramp doing a good 30+ miles an hour. Away I went airborne. When I landed I was in a inverted angle (head first) . Upon impact the front tire buckled in half, I went flying forward, nads slamming into the goose neck framing and the rest of me slamming into the ground. I layed there holding my nads for all enternity moaning in total pain. When I was finally able to get up I realized my bike was TOTALLY destroyed. My first thought, mom is going to Kill me. I waited until I knew she would be home from work and called her saying somebody stole my bike. That was the last time I ever did something as stupid as that where a ramp was involved. I realized if God wanted bikes to fly he would have had man kind design them with wings.
I ended up on the roof of a parked car after doing something similar to PatJ. The bike came off worse with the front wheel bent under the car fender. Happy days.
When I was a kid, my dad's friend gave me two old model airplane motors. I decided to make a wood frame for them, strap them onto the back of my bicycle, and go flying down the street. The motors were old and pretty much worn out, and so I was reaching around trying to adjust the needle valves to get some decent power out of them. Just as I started to pick up some decent speed, I glanced forward, and there was a parked blue VW right in front of me. I dodged as hard as I could, but the motor on the right side struck the side of the car, and the propeller left big marks all the way down the side of the car. I started to run for it, since I knew my parents were going to beat my ass for this one, and I looked up, and the owner of the car was sitting on the front porch of her house. She was perhaps 18 years old, and her dad was a judge. I could picture myself in jail, with big newspaper headlines "Crazy airplane-bike kid goes to jail; youngest bike flier ever jailed in this city !, Should be released sometime before the turn of the Century." She walked slowly down to the car, took a look at the curved scratches, and said "Ah, don't worry about it". Man was I lucky on that one, and I made a very hasty and embarrassed retreat to the house. Fast forward 28 years, and I was working for this engineering firm, and as I was getting coffee in the break room, one of the Owners walked in and said "My wife said she use to live on the same street as your family when she was growing up". I said "She didn't drive a blue VW did she?", and he said "Yes, I believe she did", and I said "Was her dad a judge?", and he said "Why yes". So I told him the airplane/bike crash story, and told him how incredibly gracious his wife had been, and how grateful I was to receive mercy after doing something so stupid. He said "You electrical guys are weird !" and stomped out of the break room. He did not talk to me for a long time after that. I was thinking to myself "You would be weird too if you had to understand everything that electrons and magnetic/electric fields do", but I held my tongue since he was an owner, and a rather stodgy old fart at that. You can't make this stuff up.
At least your Dad's friend didn't give you some pulse jet motors, think of the carnage that would have caused.
Eat your heart out guys... This was down in the Turks last weekend. Yeah it sucked pretty bad.. lol Nice place, but OMG is it EXPENSIVE! Everything is TRIPLE the cost. Not double but hardcore TRIPLE! The cheapest thing about the trip was my RHD nissan march shitbox. 4 days cost 142bucks. Automatic and cold air. Drove the piss outta it and turned it almost white from the muddy dirt roads. This is it parked in front of the little house I rented at @225 a day. Funny how they stick a bright yellow hertz sticker on the FRONT and BACK to warn other drivers you are a dumbass american driver.
At 33bucks... I'm going in the plastic gas can black market next time I go back. I asked the folks from the vrbo if they needed anything before I flew down there and they requested a blender and some contact solution. The same $35 cheapy walmart blender I brought them was over 90bucks! (triple right?) I never saw the contact solution available for sale there. I'm sure it wasn't cheap either. Car fuel was 5bucks a gallon and ironically, cigarettes was just 6bucks a pack. Jet fuel was under 5bucks. By comparison, jet fuel is $7.79 in west palm beach! It's a beautiful place still a little screwed up from the recent hurricanes. I'm sure we are going back. Some folks I work for love to dive. As pretty as that water is, it was about 73 degrees. TOO COLD for this florida boy that likes 88 degree saltwater. Maybe it will get warmer in the summer for some snorkeling.
So I could still afford to smoke and fly a jet but not drink scotch...... what does jet fuel taste like...........
