Lost, redux
That reminded me of another story of being stranded...

When I was about 20 I worked in a restaurant kitchen a good distance across downtown Rochester NY from where I was living. Usually I took the bus to work, as I didn't own a car. I worked the day shift, from about 7 to 4, so it was no big deal, really.

Well, this particular restaurant doubled as a club on the weekends. This was about 1983, and we had Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett, Hot Tuna, the drummer from Journey and some other moderately big names come through. For the bigger shows, they had me work the night shift to help out at the bar. Generally speaking, someone would give me a ride home, so it was fine with me.

One night (I think it was when Joan Jett was there) I stayed, and afterward went to go home- and no one could give me a lift. I had had this happen before- it was annoying, but if I caught the last bus downtown it was only about a four mile walk to my apartment. (At 1:00 am the hookers are even willing to talk to passers-by, so at least I wasn't totally lonely.) But this night I was just late enough that I had missed that bus- so now it was more like a ten mile walk. And it was snowing, hard.

Okay, think I, time for Plan B. At that hour of the morning, people are pretty charitable about picking up hitchhikers, so I go to the expressway to stick out my thumb. Only problem is, now it's lake effect snow coming down, and that means that it's blizzard conditions- and visibility is about 200 feet. I curse hard and plan to hike along the expressway to get home. (Plan C, I guess that is.)

Then I hear a godawful roar of engine behind me. I turn around and there's a tow truck coming toward me, dragging a tractor trailer (a lorry, for you Brits). It's not moving very fast as it goes by- and before I could think it through, I ran like hell and caught the handles of the doors on the back of the trailer and jumped up onto the bumper.

So now I'm riding on the back bumper of a truck which is accelerating along an expressway in the middle of a fucking huge snowstorm, and I have no idea how I'm going to get off of it without killing myself. And to make it even better, it was fucking COLD.

Fortunately the gods watch out for children and idiots. The truck got off at an exit close to my apartment, so when he stopped at the traffic light I jumped off and walked past. The expression on the driver's face as I waved to him was priceless.

By all rights I should have been killed or seriously wounded, or at least frozen.

Not as long this time, but plenty of girth to satisfy...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 22 Feb 2007, 19:54, Reply)