The Flying Legacy Part 2

Didn't get a chance to post yesterday since I had midterm projects to work on. . .

In summer of 2005, the summer after we graduated high school, everyone went on celebratory trips and partied for the next few months. We planned a few trips for the summer and Mike was chosen to drive. Now Mike isn't to keen on keeping his car clean or being a good driver. There is a small road that goes from the back of our town to the local route road about a mile up a hill. This is the hill we always try to go down in neutral without hitting the brakes just to see how fast we can roll down. We always did this but could never make it as we always braked before this sharp turn. If you don't stop you'll end up in the front door of a state owned historical building. So Mike decided to go down the hill and see how fast we can go with a full car. Full being myself, Jarrett, Mike and Will. We were traveling about 40 when Mike, being the semi-genius he is, decided to shut off the car! By that I mean he turned to key as far back as it would go before stopping since the car was in gear. With the engine silent, the power steering having no power, we were practically dead weight as we traveled 0 MPH down this hill.

As we approached the turn I swear this had to of been in some movie. Mike tried to restart the car but to no avail. The engine would not turn over and Mike kept turning the key and the wheel. We couldn't jump out since you would cross body yourself into a tree and the windows we're powered ones. So as we got closer and closer I swear I saw time slow down as Mike was able to finally turn over the engine and literally within inches and seconds we missed going off the road, and came very close to the rock wall. As we made it past the turned we looked at each other with that, holy shit we just survived what do we do now look. Suddenly BA-BAM!! We forgot about the dip in the road and caught some sweet air at about 70! We slowed down and arrived in back of the restaurant where Mike worked. We all got out laughing and Will hugging the ground.

We had good times in that car but in the end all good times will come to an end:

I had pictures to show but they're 5 1/2 years old and somehow I lost them over the years of many hard drives and everything else.
Part Three will be tomorrow, Was hoping to finish it up today but I wanted to put that story in.

PS. I promised a picture but since I can't find them, here's a picture of the NJ Transit schedule failing

The Flying Subaru, Part 1

For this tale, I wanted to add a back story to this. . .

So Mike is on his third car so far, he is not the best driver around and riding in the car with him can be quite scary. In high school Mike's first car was a hand me down from his mother, it was nice since he didn't have to give any payments for the car and the insurance he didn't pay yet since he was still 17 at the time. A 2002 Subaru Legacy is what he had, it was the higher up model so it had the fancy stuff inside. We did some crazy things in that car over the year he owned it. We used to speed on an old road in town, I asked Mike why we were speeding on this dangerous road and all he had to say was "Don't worry, we have all wheel drive" and sped up faster.

One of the most notable adventures of this car was back in high school. We had a mad dash out of the school parking lot after Miles took Jarrett from Mike's car, he was literally sitting in the car when Miles came up and grabbed him. So Jarrett joined Miles in his Dodge Dakota while I joined Mike in his Subaru, well not quite. Ya see I ran after Miles in his truck on foot, Mike followed next to me telling me to get in, so I jumped in his car and he said "Dude you're crazy, you ran almost 30 MPH chasing after his truck" and the parking lot wasn't that big at all. So after getting in Mike's car we chased after Miles since Mike thought he stole Jarrett since we were all suppose to hang out together. It was a game of cat and mouse driving though side roads, shopping plaza's and Wal-Mart. At one point we had lost Miles in one of the shopping centers but quickly got back on his tail as we drove up onto the highway.

Now Miles being the person he is, the backwoods of Pennsylvania redneck, he had a CB radio in his truck, so what did he do, got his trucker friends to help. At first we thought he called the cops on his CB to come get us, but as we chased after him the truckers blocked us from passing and going after him. This happened several times along the 9 mile highway from exit to exit. We finally stopped at the offramp where Mike hauled ass out of his car and ran up to strangle Miles while me and Jarrett laughed at the situation. Miles pushed Mike to the ground and he stormed back to his car and shouted for me and Jarrett to get back to the car. Mike sped away from Miles thinking it was over, but it wasn't.

We ran down the local road and with Miles following us behind we had hopes to lose him on the road somewhere. So Mike being the supposed idea man he is decided to turn off onto this old road then quickly got back on the main road. Miles being he had a Dakota at the time couldn't slow down and avoid so he went down the road and sped in hopes to catch us. We got to the bottom of the hill where we turned around to go find him. Miles finally pulled up after a few minutes bitching saying because of our chase and everything, he somehow blew out his transmission in his truck. Mike took this as a win while Miles slowly went back home in first gear.

There were more adventures in his Subaru but there is one adventure that decided the fate of Mike's car.

Tomorrow will be the second half of what happened, also pictures!!!!

Soup's on! . . . The biggest guy in school

A lot of my stories take place after we all graduated, some during high school. Only a few high school stories are worth mentioning and this is one of them.

We were all in 10th grade back in 2002-2003, The way out school was set up there were 3 half hour lunch based periods for everyone to chow down to. Me and my friends were very lucky to have all of us in at the same time so we took over a table just for ourselves. Now when you put a table full of friends together than have known each other for a long time things don't get very quiet or calm. Each day we would talk loud or annoy one another, especially miles who would annoy both Mike and Cole. Mike would get so pissed off and would try to strangle Miles, Cole on the other hand was more passive and that drove Miles crazy cause he could not break him. However Cole was very reserved and kept his cool a lot and was lucky enough to eat a homemade lunch rather than school cafeteria food which probably contained some sort of horse meat and week old macaroni.

It was a cold January winter day, a soup kind of day. At lunch time we once again sat at our table to conduct our daily routine of noms and chats. I think it was a Friday since I had gotten 2 pizza's for the price of one, since the lunch lady's liked me. Be nice to the lunch lady's and they will give you more food for free. I walked to our table with Will, passing by the teachers who pretended to be prison guardsmen of the cafeteria. We arrived back to the table where as usual Miles was pissing Mike off and bothering Jimmy. I always sat next to Will since we talked comic stuff a lot and it was a bit quieter on this side. A commotion started where Miles was grabbing Cole's food and taking Jimmy's as well. Eventually Cole went to eat the soup his mom made him, it was a homemade tomato soup with a little bit of extra herbs and spices, I could smell it from the other end of the table it was so good. But Miles being the kid he was back in high school decided to annoy Cole and began to lunge at his soup container. The two of them were wrestling  for the soup container, but Cole had has fat kid hunger grip and wasn't gonna let him take it. Now I don't know who let go but all I heard was splash, bang and gasps.

The table next to us across the aisle had the group of kids that would seem to fit well in a inner city high school setting. Grant it we lived in PA in a place where you have to drive 30min to get to a mall. These kids consisted of kids who wanted to be rappers and had one or two girls who dressed like hookers on an La street corner. At the table sat the biggest black kid in all of high school all 4 grades combined. I mean this kid could of played NFL already and pass off at least 20 years of age, and all I saw was him covered in red soup. His thigh high Fubu jeans, his popeye with an attitude shirt, even his bright white Nike's all covered in red soup. I looked at Will and just bolted cause I had a feeling this kid was gonna come over and beat our asses. I ran a few tables up to where two of my friends sat. I saw Wayne, the black kid, stand up like a golem hanging over the table. All the teachers rushed over like it was some sort of prison riot was about to happen. Wayne handed Cole back his soup container and said not to worry about it. Then he turned to miles who was a shade of white that i have never seen before. He pointed at miles and said to him, "If you ever bother this kid(Cole) again, and cause his food his momma made for him to spill all over my clothes, I'm gonna put my foot so far up your ass, that you're gonna be my foot BITCH! for the rest of the school year". Miles looked at him like a frightened hamster and said okay. At this point the teachers were trying to calm him down thinking he was gonna break Miles in half.

I looked on from another table and just laughed my ass off. Miles never bothered Cole again, well for the rest of the school year anyway. Turns out Wayne is not as much of a mean kid as he appears to be. He was pretty chill and never picked a fight with anyone, he was a little crazy, he shouted "Oh Daddy" at times in class. We never knew why he did this.

That's one of the few stories from my high school years, next story will be The Flying Legacy

Shallow Canoe

There is no chronological order to each story I post, nor any significant connection between all the stories other than the fact that we are all friends, and there is no order of how interesting each one will be, whichever story comes to mind. . . .

Back in 2007, at least I think it was then, we were chilling at Mike's house. It was May and it had to be near the weekend since we were not working or had college and I know it was a weekday because the banks were open. Anyway, Mike had us go to his basement to check out his fathers new wine cellar. Out of the corner of my eye I spot an old metal canoe that was sitting on a couple of saw horses. I had brought up an idea as to maybe go canoeing down the Delaware River for when it was nice out, later on they should of listened to my idea. So we had all agreed to fix up the canoe that weekend and take it out on the water. So after a progressive weekend we had the canoe all ready and set to go. With a new paint for the name, Rosebud was ready to hit the waves. Well it turned out that the next day was really wet and rainy so we decided to cancel the trip and wait for a nice day. Friday came along days later and we were set to ride down the river.

I arrived at Jarrett's house late morning to find the canoe had been dropped of by Mike's father since he had a truck to take the canoe up to his house. So we were ready to go when Jarrett told us that him and Mike decided to take a different course down a shallow creek. Their thinking was, since it rained so much the creek would swell up and become a small river of some sort. So we launched from the swimming hole. It lasted for a good 20 feet when suddenly, SLAM!, we bottomed out. Jarrett got out and fixed the canoe and we were off again, for another 10 feet then BAM! another big rock that got in our way. This happened for quite some time, well most of the trip anyway. Apparently it took us 20min just to travel a good 1/4 mile in a shallow creek. After bottoming out countless times and Jarrett jumping out of the canoe to fix it all, we were smoothly canoeing.

Upon exiting and entering the canoe many times, Jarrett lost his wallet in the water. After realizing this he literally ran up the creek, the water was about hip high but he could not find his wallet. So we canoed further along and things were going okay, then we hit a bit of a speed zone and our other friend, Will who is not good with water, started to panic a little bit but we assured him it was okay. The canoe headed down some very minor rapids and the water was deepening. We started to turn sideways down the stream and in an attempt to correct ourselves we nearly capsized our canoe. At this point Will is freaking out and Jarrett said fuck it and jumped out of the canoe and pulled back to correct the angle just to send us backwards down the drop. Mike jumped out as well and i believe his words were "What? everyone is doing it" So myself and Will went down backwards, the water was deep. I tried to stabilize the canoe but trying to do that when your friend has a death grip on you doesn't help much.

So after that ordeal, Mike and Jarrett jumped back into the canoe and we canoed a nice calm creek. The occasional bump of a rock was all to be felt. A fork came up and being the guys we were, two of us paddled to the left, the other two paddled to the right. I got frustrated and threw my paddle out of the canoe. We ran a ground at the fork and declared camp time since it had to of been 2pm and we wanted to drink. As we relaxed for a bit I went out to get the canoe paddle I threw out of the canoe and saw Jarrett's wallet sitting a few feet away. A bit of luck came our way and we rowed out once more. After another hour we decided to call it since we ran into a huge blockade of fallen tree's and shallow water with rocks that would sink even the best of boats. We landed on shore of a forest and noticed the nice hole in the canoe. So we had no idea where we landed but we decided to walk back to get Jarrett's jeep.

After a hike through the woods we reached the road and started our hitch hike back. It took us about 45min to get back to his house and the drive to where we left off Mike and Will took a good 10 miles to get to. We canoed 3 hours to travel 10 miles, we screwed up somewhere. Once we got there we found Mike trying to kill Will, this is a normal thing for Mike to be all angry and I'll tell more about that later. We dragged the canoe a good 70 yards through the woods and up a nice steep hill. The  we miscalculated one thing, how to strap the canoe onto the top of the jeep. Lucky for us we had a good amount of rope in which to tie it down. After driving back to his house and nearly loosing the canoe on the road several times we decided it was a good trip. Few days later I had a slight earache from the trip and it sucked a bit but it was cool.

The only thing we learned that day was to bring more beer next time.

The oops Fire

The oops Fire was something a friend of mine did back in April of 2006. 

We were reading about the history of our area one day and came upon an article that spoke of an old attraction dating back to the early 1900's. This attraction was literally built in the middle of the woods about a good mile from the Delaware River in Pa. It was suppose to be the Coney Island of the Poconos and with the exception of the lack of oceanfront much like Coney Island, it was to attract many visitors and hopeful businessmen to the area. It was once stated in an old article, of which I don't know where it originated from, this part of the Poconos was to be the Hollywood of the northeast United States. Well due to the weather of this particular part of Pa, the land was prone to flooding as the little creek swelled up to a small river in the spring months and heavy storms. The attraction park ultimately met it's demise roughly in the 20's when heavy rains flooded the area causing the little stream to swell and take over the park and swallow up anything in it's path. After the wake of the storm the park was shut down forever and it left behind one notable attraction, The Gravity Rail. More information about what a  Gravity Railroad is, can be found here: Gravity Railroad. 

Now at this point we we're all incited to go check this place out since it was only a few miles from where my friend lived. As we kept reading about this place my friend Mike said that there was a bank located in the park and that the safe had washed away. So being how adventurous Mike is, he really wanted to go out and find this 'lost safe' in hopes to find historical money. So with myself, Mike and our two other friends we geared ourselves up and drove off to the site of the once attraction park. I had doubts of finding such treasure but to be in a pace of history was good enough for me, however Mike had strong intentions to be a treasure hunter much like Indiana Jones, and on the drive there we had no idea the adventure we had in mind. 

We arrived the spot and took off into the woods, geared with shovels, metal detectors and an assortment of other supplies we could see a clearing ahead of us. In the middle of the woods was a stream that lead us into a vast clearing of where the attraction once stood almost a century earlier. With our metal detectors in hand we began to sweep along the stream, we found old nails, bolts, poop and an old rusted metal plate. We walked all over the clearing and once we neared the cliffs we had found a thick heavy cable that ran across the land. This was the cable used for the gravity railroad that was which the main attraction to this place, it ran along a rail that was nearly a mile long, we found old rail ties and rails themselves that were left over from the park. The years of rust have proved minimal as the rails survived over a century in the woods in the ever changing weather. 

After being amused for a bit we went back to the clearing in which was covered in dry grass and leaves. The metal detectors would go off every so often and we would dig just to find old rusty nails and bolts. Occasionally we found an old bottle or beer cans from late night party goers. Then our detectors found something, we were frustrated to find that the metal detector had picked up an item underneath a huge pile of brush and dirt. All 3 of our detectors went off high on the chart which told us something valuable was there. But we were tired after wandering for hours so my friend Mike decided to be smart and clear the brush in a different fashion. He took a can of spray paint and painted the brush, thinking it was X marks the spot suddenly Mike pulls out a torch lighter and sets the ground on fire to burn away the brush. What an idiot he was and the 3 of us watch the dry brush burn . . .

Did I mention it was April and very VERY dry out . . .

Mike's 'genius' idea to clear by burning went over well . . .  for about 10 seconds when suddenly, WHOOOOSH! the fire spread quickly in a ring style from the starting point. Panicked we rushed to bury the fire in dirt but to no avail, the fire was spreading fast and instead of trying to stop, we bitched to each other. So after 5 minutes of trying to play fireman we decided to get out before we cook ourselves. We grabbed all the equipment and rushed back to the car only to go back to get my friend's camera that had fallen out of his pocket, oh and one of our friend's is not that good at hiking. So we literally picked him up and ran to my car. We took off like a bat out of hell as the fire burned. Being the responsible kids that we were, we headed off to alert the fire department of what was happening. There was no investigation and the fire department did an excellent job.

We went back a month later and found out that our little accident proved worthy to the land and the ashes left over from the fire promoted growth in the land as we saw green budding plants all over the burnt land. We may have nearly caused a huge forest fire but in the end we were able to bring life back to a lifeless land. A few years later we had gotten back into contact with an old friend of ours, only to learn that he was one of the volunteers who responded to that fire call. He said it was the most exciting thing to happen in spring in years.

The new blog

Welcome one and all, this is the new website for my blog. This blog will be a series of stories that I've encountered throughout my life of nearly 1/4 of a century. As I approach the age of 24 I will share all interesting stories and adventures of not only myself, but stories of my friends that we all have encountered. I will update as often as I get bored and promise to provide interesting stories, and not so much walls of text.

Also I will be keeping this site simple as possible, so no eye spasms or a bombardment of imagery.

Some of the stories will be:
-The oops Fire
-The Ouch Tree
-The Town Fire
-The Maine Trip (Multiple parts)
-The Virginia Trip (Multiple parts)
-The Log
-Jimmy and the Dinkmobile(Multiple)
-The Drive Thru Post Office
-Miles and the Ford Ranger Adventures(Multiple)
-Mr. Angry(Tales about pissing our friend Mike off to no extent)
-The White Castle Snow Storm
-10 Degrees of Rubber
-The Man Van
-3 Rednecks in New York City
and many more, each of which are interesting and exciting to read, some will have pictures!!!!