Things learned the hard way.

Especially if filling the tank doubles the Bluebook value.....

 

Visiting a friend/business acquaintance in San Diego a few years ago-on the way out to his boat he mentions a rat had gotten aboard.And about the poison he spread out in hopes to get him.

I told him he'd better hope the rat hadn't.

Forty feet away, downwind we could tell he had gotten that rat all right...luckily it died on the floor and not behind his nice teak and microsuede uphostery/wall linings.
Took him a month to get the smell out-and sometimes you could catch a tiny whiff,2 years later

 

Nearly thirty years ago - I'm 16 years old and working under my '66 Mustang with the front wheels up on homemade wooden ramps - my head is right behind the left front wheel, reaching up to disconnect tranny connections (for a rebuilt tranny). Rear wheels are not blocked....parking brake inoperative. Laying there turning wrenches, life is grand, think I'm Mr Mechanic. Then I see a lever poking out of the side of the transmission and for some dumb reason I reach up and rotate it by hand. Thereby switching the tranny out of Park and into R or N, don't know which. Car starts to immediately roll down the ramps and toward my head. Fortunately adrenalin kicks in and I roll out out of the way in about .1 second and live to see another day. Car slows down on the flat and then bumps slightly into bumper of my Dad's truck. Kinda funny now but could have turned out so much worse. The memory is burned in my brain - not one of my brighter moments.

Dad drops comments for years afterwards, "wondering" how that dent got in his bumper. I never had the balls to fess up.

 

With his comments he was probably trying to give you a chance to fess up.

 

Is this realy 'things learned the hard way' or --'the dumbest things I can think of competition'.

Because if it is ---stand back--

 

I'd say those two categories overlap quite a bit. IMO.

 

Hy Jay welcome -- I love carnation milk in my coffee,--thanks for that and hows things down under in Western Australia

 

Sry, I'm not in Australia. i live in the USA out in the glorious Pacific NW - Washington State. I wish I was down under tho - I hear the weather is so nice that the boats basically just build themselves at night while you sleep.

 

First time I came down here to work, I parked my motor home in a small trailer park down by the lagoon. One of the professional drunks there came home at closing time one night and decided to jack his vehicle up, crawl under it, and make some sort of repair or adjustment before leaving on a trip come morning.

A neighbor came by about sunrise and saw the guy's legs sticking out. So he said "you're up early," and slapped him on a bare leg. The leg was cold....

His car had slipped off the jack, there weren't any jack stands under it, and the oil pan landed on his chest and kept him from breathing.

The stupidest part of that story? A year before he had used the same bumper jack to raise the same car, and crawled under it with no jack stands. Apparently he was a slow learner, because getting his arm broken that time didn't teach him anything.

He sure made a believer out of me, though. I'm not nearly as casual as I used to be about crawling under cars.

 

Hmmm I don't think thats quite true most boat building companies have gone down under themselves, or belly up however you want to describe it.

So you live in WS not WA ?

Edit--

Damn it Troy you posted over me.

 

"WA" is the US postal code abbreviation for Washington State - didn't realize until now that this could be confused with Wester Australia (my bad). I fixed it.

 

I guess you're getting old and slow, Frosty, when even I beat you to the punch.

 

Does he still vote?

 

Another tip - when a friend is all happy about getting a fixer-upper boat, wait a few days before saying "well, you got an ok trailer."

 

He died thirty years ago Hoyt -- since then he's had three more kids and they all vote.