[silvan]

Originally Posted by Cluggy619

Sometimes it funny when a 4 wheeler catches on fire..

Didn't say nothing to him, and laugh as I left. Nature has it's way of gettin rid of the stupid...

That reminds me of another story.

'Twas the day before Christmas Eve, somewhen in the '90s, and my fuel pump was acting up. When I went to go through the cash boxes getting off the Greenstamp, my truck kept lurching weirdly, and the throttle was getting stuck full on. Not the spring, not the linkage, no idea WTF it was.

So they had me drop my trailer in a mall, park my truck, and walk something like five miles to a U-Haul place to get a U-Haul to pick up my last stop and my pallet jack. I was to make the last delivery, then drive the U-Haul back home for Christmas while they worked on my truck over the holidays.

So I'm driving this stupid U-Haul, and it's snowing in DC, no idea where the lines are around Suicide Circle at all, and I'm out there in this stupid U-Haul. Now that I think about it, that was my first year of trucking. My first winter. My first snow in a big truck, and I wasn't even in a big truck. How's that for weird.

I made it around the Circle, and back to I-81 heading home. Somewhere around Raphine it started getting slicker and slicker with black ice everywhere. I was going really slow, and wondering if I shouldn't pull off, and wondering where the hell I was going to sleep in this stupid U-Haul if I did.

I was easing along, maybe 45 mph or something, and this fourwheeler passed me like I was standing still. Whooosh.

"Gee. Maybe I'm being too much of a wuss, and I should just speed up and drive on in tonight. Look what that car just did. He's fine, and he's going twice as fast as me."

Well, a couple miles down the road, I saw that fourwheeler in the median, upside down, with the headlights facing north.

I pulled into the Wilco at the 205, and slept on the bench seat with my knees bent half cockeyed. Worst night's sleep of my life, but it could have been a lot worse. I drove that stupid U-Haul the rest of the way in the next morning, and I made it home in time to drive my wife to visit with my lovely mother-in-law.

I thought it was real quality of them to rent something for me to drive home like that, incidentally. If not for that, I would have been stuck up in Philly until after the new year.