rediculous story #1
Sep. 13th, 2003 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanIn one of my earlier (much earlier) posts I had mentioned something vaguely along the lines of thinking that most people wouldn't find my LJ noodlings very interesting. A friend responded with sarcasm, "Yeah, because you have such a boring life."
Well I don't have a boring life, but you know, one of the features of interesting times is that while they are actually going on, one rarely has the time to sit down and write about them.
Now for a lot of the stuff, "interesting" roughly maps to "what the fuck was I thinking" or "the statute of limitations hasn't run out on that yet", but some of them were just dopey situations that made for good down-at-the-pub stories once I'd cleaned myself off. And it's that last group that I've decided to post for all the people on my friends list who might be entertained at some of the idiotic shit I get myself into.
So without further ado,
My youngest sister has never had a driver's licence. She lives in downtown Toronto, so she's never really needed one.
Due to health issues she doesn't drink much, and at the time of this story she didn't drink at all. Since she wasn't drinking anyway, a lot of her friends pressured her to get a driver's licence so she could act as designated driver on some of their nights out.
So she got her learner's permit. My dad took her out in his car a few times, but she didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about the whole thing. I was in the car with them once while she was practicing, and I decided I knew what the problem was, she was afraid of the other cars. I told her I'd take her out one day in my car to some place where there were no cars so that she would have a chance to get used to the controls and start to feel comfortable behind the wheel before she hit the streets.
Now Toronto doesn't have too many places with no cars. In fact, I'd say they have close to none. But at that time my ex was moving from Guelph to Toronto, and I happened to know there was a racetrack with a big parking lot right outside town. So we made plans that she would come along to help him move, and on our way up we would stop at the race track for an hour or two of driving lessons.
My ex's moving date was April 1, and for the last two weeks of March it just rained non-stop. None of us were particularily looking forward to hauling furniture in the rain. On the morning of April 1st, however, it dawned clear and cold. Really cold. Really really really cold.
So I picked up my sister and off we went to Guelph. We got to the racetrack right on schedule, and I swung the car into the parking lot.
It was pretty obvious right quick that this was not going to work. The highways had been fine, the traffic had warmed the road and they were dry and clear. In the parking lot, however, two weeks worth of rain had resulted in a foot-and-a-half of water on the surface of the asphalt, with a solid sheet of ice covering the whole thing. As the car moved forward the ice broke under the tires and bogged us down in the water. The purchase was horrible, and I was afraid that if I stopped, we wouldn't have the traction to get moving again.
I told my sister we were going to have to do this somewhere else and I swung the car in a wide circle back towards the exit. We slowly picked up speed as I headed out of the parking lot.
And then the front of the car crashed downward through the ice, burying the hood under the surface of the water.
The car stalled of course and after a moment of shock, I cracked up laughing. I mean what else was I going to do, I was sitting at a 45 degree angle with the front of my car half in the water.
It turned out that I had hit a drainage ditch. The drains had become plugged somehow, and so the ditched had filled up level with water and frozen over to create a continuous sheet of ice. There were no markers or barriers anywhere, and I had just driven straight into it.
My sister elected to stay inside and wait while I went for help. I couldn't open the doors because they were under water, so I popped the hatch and then clambered over the seats and hopped off the bumper. I landed in ice water that instantly rose over the top of my boots and filled them up. Fortunately, my feet went numb almost immediately.
I got lucky, I had only walked for five minutes before a couple of guys in a pickup stopped. They had seen the car on their way by and offered to drop me at the security station at the race track so I took them up on their offer.
The security guard was highly amused by my tale of woe, and he let me use the phone to try and call CAA. The recorded voice on the line informed me that "due to a high volume of calls" I was probably going to be waiting for a couple of hours before help came. After 25 minutes of patiently waiting while the recorded voice reiterated this information and 20 or 30 times, the security guard suggested that he call the grounds crew and see if they could help.
I thought this was a great idea, so he called them up and within 10 minutes I was getting into a truck with a group of men who were all eager to add a little entertainment value to their day. One of the guys was telling me a story about a woman who had showed up covered in mud and water after driving her car into a nearby creek, and the driver was in the middle of saying, "So where did you leave your...?" just as we rounded the last of the buildings between the guard station and the parking lot. There, in a feild of white, was the ass-end of my poor car sticking up from the ice.
The car had slid further into the ditch while I had been gone. Water was bubbling slowly up through the floorboards with an ominous "glub, glub" sound. My sister was perched on the passenger seat, trying to figure out how to open the hatch or whether she should just bail through the window. I opened the back of the car and she climbed out, feet splashing into the ice cold water. The men of the grounds crew stood in a semi-circle around the car, hands thrust into the pockets of their orange cover-alls, nodding sagely at each other and saying, "Yup. She's in thar."
Finally one of them turned to me.
"Look, we can try getting your car out of there. We can throw a chain around the axle and pull it out. Only thing is, we might damage your car, and I don't want you suing us if we yank the axle right offa it."
I promised I wouldn't sue, and my sister and I climbed back up on the bumper of the car to perch there as they piled back into their truck and drove away. A few minutes later they were back -- with one of their number driving a small bulldozer.
The rest took literally under a minute. They threw the chain around the car and the bulldozer took off, popping the car out of the ditch like a cork leaving a wine bottle. They pulled the chain off, and I hopped into the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition. She started immediately, and with the bulldozer clearing a path through the ice, we drove away, waving behind us at the men in the truck.
There was water in the passenger compartment. The brake pedal was under water. The gas pedal was under water. Every time we turned a corner, I would speed up a little and we would throw open the doors, trying to get some of the water to sluice out.
Once at the ex's house, we bailed all the water out of the bottom of the passenger compartment. By the time we had loaded up the hatch with boxes, we had to bail it out again. Back in Toronto, we bailed it out a third time.
The next day I took it into a garage, where they had to replace the transmission and the radiator. The punchline was the conversation with my insurance company -- you see this was the third claim I had made in two months. The first one was a minor fender-bender in a parking lot. Then while my car was in the bodyshop, the rental car I had been driving was rear-ended by a country and western singer named Durango Coy.
By the time I called with my third claim I was on a first-name basis with my adjustor. "Tony" I said, "I have a long sad story to tell you."
I'm think he put it on the speaker phone because I could have sworn I heard muffled laughter in the background.
I drove that car for another 6 years.
During that time it caught fire twice.
But that's another story.
Well I don't have a boring life, but you know, one of the features of interesting times is that while they are actually going on, one rarely has the time to sit down and write about them.
Now for a lot of the stuff, "interesting" roughly maps to "what the fuck was I thinking" or "the statute of limitations hasn't run out on that yet", but some of them were just dopey situations that made for good down-at-the-pub stories once I'd cleaned myself off. And it's that last group that I've decided to post for all the people on my friends list who might be entertained at some of the idiotic shit I get myself into.
So without further ado,
My youngest sister has never had a driver's licence. She lives in downtown Toronto, so she's never really needed one.
Due to health issues she doesn't drink much, and at the time of this story she didn't drink at all. Since she wasn't drinking anyway, a lot of her friends pressured her to get a driver's licence so she could act as designated driver on some of their nights out.
So she got her learner's permit. My dad took her out in his car a few times, but she didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about the whole thing. I was in the car with them once while she was practicing, and I decided I knew what the problem was, she was afraid of the other cars. I told her I'd take her out one day in my car to some place where there were no cars so that she would have a chance to get used to the controls and start to feel comfortable behind the wheel before she hit the streets.
Now Toronto doesn't have too many places with no cars. In fact, I'd say they have close to none. But at that time my ex was moving from Guelph to Toronto, and I happened to know there was a racetrack with a big parking lot right outside town. So we made plans that she would come along to help him move, and on our way up we would stop at the race track for an hour or two of driving lessons.
My ex's moving date was April 1, and for the last two weeks of March it just rained non-stop. None of us were particularily looking forward to hauling furniture in the rain. On the morning of April 1st, however, it dawned clear and cold. Really cold. Really really really cold.
So I picked up my sister and off we went to Guelph. We got to the racetrack right on schedule, and I swung the car into the parking lot.
It was pretty obvious right quick that this was not going to work. The highways had been fine, the traffic had warmed the road and they were dry and clear. In the parking lot, however, two weeks worth of rain had resulted in a foot-and-a-half of water on the surface of the asphalt, with a solid sheet of ice covering the whole thing. As the car moved forward the ice broke under the tires and bogged us down in the water. The purchase was horrible, and I was afraid that if I stopped, we wouldn't have the traction to get moving again.
I told my sister we were going to have to do this somewhere else and I swung the car in a wide circle back towards the exit. We slowly picked up speed as I headed out of the parking lot.
And then the front of the car crashed downward through the ice, burying the hood under the surface of the water.
The car stalled of course and after a moment of shock, I cracked up laughing. I mean what else was I going to do, I was sitting at a 45 degree angle with the front of my car half in the water.
It turned out that I had hit a drainage ditch. The drains had become plugged somehow, and so the ditched had filled up level with water and frozen over to create a continuous sheet of ice. There were no markers or barriers anywhere, and I had just driven straight into it.
My sister elected to stay inside and wait while I went for help. I couldn't open the doors because they were under water, so I popped the hatch and then clambered over the seats and hopped off the bumper. I landed in ice water that instantly rose over the top of my boots and filled them up. Fortunately, my feet went numb almost immediately.
I got lucky, I had only walked for five minutes before a couple of guys in a pickup stopped. They had seen the car on their way by and offered to drop me at the security station at the race track so I took them up on their offer.
The security guard was highly amused by my tale of woe, and he let me use the phone to try and call CAA. The recorded voice on the line informed me that "due to a high volume of calls" I was probably going to be waiting for a couple of hours before help came. After 25 minutes of patiently waiting while the recorded voice reiterated this information and 20 or 30 times, the security guard suggested that he call the grounds crew and see if they could help.
I thought this was a great idea, so he called them up and within 10 minutes I was getting into a truck with a group of men who were all eager to add a little entertainment value to their day. One of the guys was telling me a story about a woman who had showed up covered in mud and water after driving her car into a nearby creek, and the driver was in the middle of saying, "So where did you leave your...?" just as we rounded the last of the buildings between the guard station and the parking lot. There, in a feild of white, was the ass-end of my poor car sticking up from the ice.
The car had slid further into the ditch while I had been gone. Water was bubbling slowly up through the floorboards with an ominous "glub, glub" sound. My sister was perched on the passenger seat, trying to figure out how to open the hatch or whether she should just bail through the window. I opened the back of the car and she climbed out, feet splashing into the ice cold water. The men of the grounds crew stood in a semi-circle around the car, hands thrust into the pockets of their orange cover-alls, nodding sagely at each other and saying, "Yup. She's in thar."
Finally one of them turned to me.
"Look, we can try getting your car out of there. We can throw a chain around the axle and pull it out. Only thing is, we might damage your car, and I don't want you suing us if we yank the axle right offa it."
I promised I wouldn't sue, and my sister and I climbed back up on the bumper of the car to perch there as they piled back into their truck and drove away. A few minutes later they were back -- with one of their number driving a small bulldozer.
The rest took literally under a minute. They threw the chain around the car and the bulldozer took off, popping the car out of the ditch like a cork leaving a wine bottle. They pulled the chain off, and I hopped into the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition. She started immediately, and with the bulldozer clearing a path through the ice, we drove away, waving behind us at the men in the truck.
There was water in the passenger compartment. The brake pedal was under water. The gas pedal was under water. Every time we turned a corner, I would speed up a little and we would throw open the doors, trying to get some of the water to sluice out.
Once at the ex's house, we bailed all the water out of the bottom of the passenger compartment. By the time we had loaded up the hatch with boxes, we had to bail it out again. Back in Toronto, we bailed it out a third time.
The next day I took it into a garage, where they had to replace the transmission and the radiator. The punchline was the conversation with my insurance company -- you see this was the third claim I had made in two months. The first one was a minor fender-bender in a parking lot. Then while my car was in the bodyshop, the rental car I had been driving was rear-ended by a country and western singer named Durango Coy.
By the time I called with my third claim I was on a first-name basis with my adjustor. "Tony" I said, "I have a long sad story to tell you."
I'm think he put it on the speaker phone because I could have sworn I heard muffled laughter in the background.
I drove that car for another 6 years.
During that time it caught fire twice.
But that's another story.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 07:22 pm (UTC)I drove that car for another 6 years.
During that time it caught fire twice.
Hey, I've had two car fires too. One per car though.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 08:11 pm (UTC)free beer
Date: 2003-09-14 01:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-14 08:22 am (UTC)(Looks like we've figured out how to keep her telling stories). :)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 08:15 pm (UTC)sometimes i'm quite pleased that my life is so....boring.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 08:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 09:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 10:28 pm (UTC)and this is only the first? if you, like a good story-teller, save the best for last, i'm definitely hooked...
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-14 01:40 am (UTC)I just can't believe that people will still get in car with me...
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-13 11:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-14 02:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-14 05:29 am (UTC)Thanks for a great story - apparently you have driving stories the way I have flying stories.
Durango Coy
Date: 2003-09-14 08:49 am (UTC)Durango Coy. I saw his ID.
Little tiny man in a cowboy hat. He looked distinctly nervous when all the big leather-jacketed people with tattoos and funky hair got out my car.
Thanks for a great story - apparently you have driving stories the way I have flying stories.
Share. :-)
Re: Durango Coy
Date: 2003-09-14 06:29 pm (UTC)Actually, now that I come to think of it, I think there must have been more people at the airport, 'cause I'm pretty sure that was the same trip when I was on the plane with the Glasgow Rangers football (soccer) team - who drank the plane dry half-way across the Atlantic. Seriously, three hours in and not an alcoholic beverage anywhere - but one hell of a line-up for the bathrooms.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-14 10:00 am (UTC)apologies and enormous boxes of love :)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-14 09:45 pm (UTC)omg. vehicular woe indeed. you realize you are now an insurance claims legend?