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Lance Lambert |
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OH CHUTE! |
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This column is always about cars in one form or another. Today it’s about un-powered, un-wheeled transportation under the control of an unintelligent 13 year old boy. My father collected an odd assortment of stuff resulting in my boyhood residence being a combination scrap yard and recycling center. There were piles of used plumbing fixtures, junk motorcycles, a bunch of discarded benches that I turned into a pirate ship, boxes of glass chandelier parts that I pretended were pirate treasure, dozens of gallon jugs that I filled with water and shot with my pirate’s musket (BB gun), boxes of old military flares, rolled up sheets of roofing tar (that actually made reasonable chewing gum), and, best of all, a parachute. This surplus military freight parachute was used for dropping supplies into remote locations so G.I.’s could have lots of yummy two year old biscuits or whatever items they were short of. It was a bit smaller than what would be used to float a nearly full grown soldier to the ground, making it perfect to float this 13 year old boy around the neighborhood. My first foray into the wild blue yonder was at the local park. I reasoned that if I laid out the open parachute just right and began running, it would inflate and, well, do something dangerous and exciting. This was long before base jumping, parasailing and other two digit I.Q. activities became the passion of today’s thrill seeking invincible young adults. So here I am running down the hill with a parachute behind me that is actually filling up, rising above me and raising me off the ground! I floated above the ground for distances of a few feet to perhaps a hundred feet. This method of travel worked well for several flights until one takeoff when the parachute’s canopy decided to travel forward instead of upward. Picture a cartoon where the hapless character’s legs are spinning wildly as he attempts to keep up with whatever is forcing him to go faster than nature allows. Put my face on that character and you have a good idea of what was going on in my life at that moment. It all came to an abrupt end when a tennis court fence stopped my forward momentum. I was propelled into a metal post that left a lasting impression on my rib cage. To this day I have a section of my ribs that don’t reside where the rest of my ribs do. My flights around the neighborhood continued until the fateful day when I got tangled up in a tree. My exuberant extraction attempts resulted in the parachute being ripped and my budding career as a skydiver being temporarily put on hold. Fifteen years later I found myself stepping out the door of an airplane that had been doing an excellent job of transporting me and was in no need of exiting. I repeated this mode of motivation many times until the day that my parachute decided to not properly open. That was also the day that I retired from my adventures in unpowered transportation. |
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