Upside down and backwards on I 25

The Commander and Lord Kadizzle have been married since the time of the dinosaurs. Kadizzle has always felt like he was upside down when he communicated with The Commander. On a nice sunny day 15 miles south of Pueblo Kadizzle was upside down talking to the Commander.

Metal from the the right rear trailer tire on the trailer in front of us spewed across the highway. As luck would have it one piece of metal blew out our right rear tire, and another piece probably triggered the emergency brakes on the trailer. The combination of locked wheels on the Earth module and a blown tire flipped the Earth module on it's side.

As Kadizzle tried to steer the truck he had no idea the trailer was on it's side doing the steering. Kadizzle tried to stay in front of the trailer, but it was hopeless. The trailer steered the truck at about 65 miles an hour into the median strip. Things were not good and the Kadizzles were mostly along for the ride at this point. The last thing The Commander recalled was going in the ditch. Kadizzle recalls coming up out of the ditch headed into oncoming traffic. That was the last recollection of the occupants until they found themselves upside down.

The mechanism that attaches the truck to the trailer is designed to transfer weight from the trailer to the truck. However, it also can apply torque to the truck. The truck could resist the torque from the trailer until it started to come out of the ditch. At this point the slope of the ditch made it easy for the trailer to overturn the truck. When the computer, who was a hero in this mess, sensed the truck rolling over it set off the side airbags. The computer showed it's genius by not setting off the front air bags. They were not needed because of the rate of deceleration. Airbags exploding in front of us was the last thing we needed. The side air bags did their job, but they also did one thing that did not occur to Kadizzle until later. The air bag explosion stunned Kadizzle and The Commander. The air bags acted like the flash bang grenades swat teams use to stun the bad guys. That is why neither occupant remember the best part of the ride, rolling over and spinning around. Although the truck and trailer were originally headed north on I-25 the whole apparatus ended up facing south upside down.

This is the point where the crew found themselves hanging upside down in the cab of the pickup. Kadizzle inquired if The Commander was ok, and the report was good. Kadizzle let The Commander know he was OK. The prospect of getting out did not immediately look good. Kadizzle was very concerned about the fuel onboard the overturned vehicle. In the bed of the pickup there was a seven gallon gas can Kadizzle had just filled. The motorcycle upside down in the back held about three gallons of gas. The trailer had two large propane tanks full of propane. If there was a fire, it would be a good one when you added another twenty gallons of gasoline from the truck itself. With this in mind Kadizzle shouted to The Commander to “Get out, get out as fast as you can”. The Commander is a small woman and quickly crawled out the broken window on her side. Kadizzle looked at the small opening and wondered if his massive belly was going to make it through the escape hatch. Fortunately we were quickly outside and stunned that we were totally unhurt.

As cars stopped people assumed we were trapped under the truck. Several people asked us if there were people in there. They were surprised when we said we were. When Kadizzle gained his senses he called 911 and asked the highway patrol to see if they could find the truck that caused the incident. By the time they checked the truck was not to be found. It took several hours to clear the wreck and we had to come back to the junk yard the next day to get our personal items. The moral of the story is wear your seatbelts, and when you drive ask yourself “Is this a good speed to have a wreck?” You will never wish you were going faster once you try the roll over. Over all the judges gave us an eight. We got four points for doing a 180 with the truck and trailer, and four points for doing 180 degrees from North to South. Our form was good and our final alignment with the highway was great. The only way we could have scored hirer would have to done a complete 360. Few have ever achieved this feat and walked away.

Woodsdale Field of Dreams

Each year the first week of April brings not only the promise of spring, but also opening day for major league baseball, the national past-time of our childhood.

Baseball was my favorite sport growing up in Woodsdale. My first memories of the game involved sitting on our front porch with my Great Aunt Ann listening to Bob Prince describe all the action of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I can remember watching the 3rd and 4^th graders playing baseball on the Woodsdale playground during recess and after school. When school was out for summer, the game moved to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Heiskell Avenue.

This baseball diamond was our “field of dreams”. St. John’s was a short bike ride for everybody in the neighborhood. The Dad’s of the neighborhood had marked out a baseball diamond with a pitcher’s mound. To top things off, they even built a backstop behind home plate.We cut out cardboard squares for bases, but more often than not, our T-shirts served as a handy substitute.   The entrance fee was a baseball glove and a baseball. No matter when you got to the field, there was always a game going on.

The game was called “Work-up”.  The object was to play each of the field positions to earn the right to bat. Players started out in right field and “worked” through the positions; right field to center field to left field to 3^rd base, and so on until you got to the batter’s box. You continued to bat until you struck out, flied out, or were put out at a base. When you were called out, you returned to right field, and once again had to “work” your way back to the batter’s box.  If we didn’t have enough players to fill out the positions, we simply declared that if you hit the ball into an area without a player, you were out. Although it was rare, if we had a line of kids waiting to rotate in, four foul balls qualified as an out, and you went to the end of the waiting line to await your turn to get back in the rotation. We all learned how to play baseball playing “work-up” on St. John’s field during those warm summer days in Woodsdale.

By the time we reached the age of 10, most of us had out grown St. John’s field. However, by then, we had developed the skills necessary to take the next step…..try out for the Pike Cubs.

But that’s another story.

Rainbow Over Stratford Hill