Many moons ago, I took some stuff from the office to work on at home. The stuff was Very Important Data housed on 5.25" floppy disks. The next morning I threw the disks in my car and drove the hour in to work. When I got there I couldn’t find the disks anywhere. OK, think back, what could have happened? Let’s see, I went out to the garage with my coffee in one hand and the disks in the other. I put one of them on the roof of the car while I opened the door. Coffee cup is still here. Oh, crap. I had left the disks with the Very Imporatant Data on top of the car! That data existed no where except on those disks because “Backups? We don’t need no stinking backups!”. This is the part where I mention that it was raining. Heavily. All the way from my house to my office. I told my boss I had left the disks at home (not entirely a lie).
All the way home that evening I kept one eye on the side of the road for any sign of the disks and - lo and behold - spotted them in a ditch about a half mile from the house! They were all there, but absolutely soaked. I drained out all the water I could, patted them down with a paper towel and used my wife’s hair dryer to finish the job. Even on low heat it deformed the disk case, I just hoped it wasn’t ruining the disk itself. With shaking hands I put one in the computer - it worked! They all worked! After a few scary minutes copying each onto a new floppy (and creating a backup) my heart rate slowed for the first time since early that morning.
My idiot dog!
Had a car seat for him; basically a harness with a big loop in the back that you put the seatbelt thru. It keeps them from flying if you slam the brakes, but more importantly, keeps them from jumping all around in the car & distracting the driver. Normally, he’d get so excited that he’d spin around & around until the seat belt & harness were a tangled mess that I’d have trouble undoing when I went to get him out.
Like normal, he was in the rear seat with the window ½-way down. Somehow, this day he managed to not twist & then, with his rear paw he managed to step on the seat belt release buckle just right. The belt auto-retracted right out of the harness loop. Something he’d never done before. Then he managed to put his front paw on the arm rest in just the right way that he managed to depress the power window button, putting the window all the way down; again, something he had never done before.
Then he jumped at about 30mph! :smack: Luckily, I noticed it out of my rear-view mirror. It had been raining so the road was wet, which helped him out a bit as there was less friction when he went splat. He only ended up with a few cuts & scrapes & shaken up - literally, he was shaking.
I never let him in the car again unless the window lock button was on!
Oh my! Glad he was okay, and thanks for the story. I can see my Pyrenees doing something like that, so I’ll be sure to lock the windows when she’s in the back of the Suburban! (She already rides in a harness, because otherwise, she’ll try to ride in my lap. I originally started using a harness about 20 years ago, because my Corgi loved to ride, but I worried that he’d be all over the car, including trying to get in the driver’s seat. I guess that was a bit unusual back then, because the first time I went through a license and insurance checkpoint with the dog belted in, the deputy thought it was hilarious to see both kids and Woofie in their “car seats.”)
My sister in law. I had picked her up from the beauty shop on my motorcycle, and she didn’t want to put the helmet on her newly coiffed hair. Of course I insisted, so she fixed the chin strap very loosely so the helmet kind of sat atop her new do.
At a light, she put her feet on the ground to adjust the damn helmet. Light changed, I drove on. Leaving her. Twas a little Honda 90, but still, there she was standing there in the road, and right next to a school bus full of high school kids.
Another time, someone lost the hood of their car. Dunno what happened, but I was walking up the street, and some guy in a muscle car, pulled out from somewhere behind me, goosed it, and as he gained speed, the damn hood flew off. Landed about 20’ in front of me and was skidding my way when it luckily stopped. He came back, looked at it, pronounced it toast, and drove off leaving it.
I thought heard something clatter off my jeep so I pulled over. The car behind me also stopped. They confirmed that they’d seen this thing drop off. We searched around but couldn’t find anything, well actually there seemed to be quite a few spare parts dotting along the hedgerow, but none fit the description.
The other car overtook me as I drove slowly on, waiting to see if it was a really important part of the vehicle only to meet the other car pulled up with the occupants pointing out my piece of car in the road. It had wedged under their car and dropped off when they hit a bump! I posted about it here because I couldn’t figure out what it was. Some sort of anti roll stabilizer thing with the rubber ends worn off. Never replaced it.
A friend had a Norton motorcycle that he had sold a year or two before because he had cross-threaded a spark plug and couldn’t remove it. But he bought the bike back, bad plug and all, because . . . because.
The bike being English, it was dripping oil as we laughingly warned him about parts flying off just before we all left on our bikes — him on the Norton and me and another friend on our Hondas — for coffee at gas-station restaurant a few miles up a secondary highway where it met the main highway, him in the lead and me behind him.
Half-way up the secondary, at highway speed, his left mirror flew off and whipped past my helmet by only a couple of inches. It made for juicy conversation over coffee at the gas station.
A week or so later he had unloaded the Norton again, this time for a killer Kaw. The Norton was never seen again.