» Expensive Mistakes

My dad the pilot...
...once retracted the landing gear of an airplane in mid-taxi instead of checking the flaps as intended. **kahhTHUNK** Cost? $20,000 damage to the plane (in the 1960s mind you, not adjusted for inflation), serious mental damage to the passengers, and main airport runway access blocked for several hours.

Length? 50ft, twin engine.

(and first ever post, yay me! :-)
(Thu 25th Oct 2007, 12:35, More)

» Expensive Mistakes

My dad (the pilot) again...
Same dad as from the earlier pilot story, although this doesn't involve planes. He managed to set serious fire to our kitchen trying to make tortilla chips. Couldn't be bothered to run out to a store to purchase them, oh no, cause football was on. Said football game was sufficiently interesting to keep his mind *off* the large pan of frying oil he'd set heating on the stove. Result = conflagration. But that's not the best part.

Three months later, kitchen almost rebuilt. Cabinets in but not yet repainted, replacement stove/fridge/etc. while first lot are all being repaired. Guess who decides to make tortilla chips again? This time a friend came to the front door. Result = conflagration number 2. Which he also cleverly put out himself using the best item to hand...the water-soaked best silk sheets sitting in the nearby laundry basket. My mother was out of town at the time but I can still hear her voice screeching at him from the telephone receiver that he was holding 3 feet from his head.

To be fair to him though, my mother did manage to put dad's sports car (the one he had painstakingly rebuilt himself) into reverse one day while they were travelling 60 mph down a highway. *SCREEEEEEthunk* = one transmission less.

Surprisingly, my parents aren't married anymore :-)

Apologies for length, but they were married almost 20 years, which by anyone's standards was probably too long :-)
(Wed 31st Oct 2007, 10:42, More)