March 4th, 2010
This one is great because I wasn’t the only one who failed here. I prefer to fail in groups. Anyway, it was a snowy day several years back and being bored, I decided to go off-roading in a nearby canyon. The truck I was in was completely stock and was not known for off-road prowess, but I was determined! Determination + stupid idea always = fail. This was no exception.
After tackling a couple small hills that had snow maybe 2-ft. deep and almost getting stuck a few times, I thought about heading back home. Instead, I pressed on going further up a hill into deeper snow. Yup, got stuck. No big deal because I had a shovel handy. After digging for a long, long time and getting nowhere, I called my step-brother. The same one from the belt fail story. He had a truck that was smaller than the truck I was in, but it had the factory off-road package, a lift, better tires, etc. He had no problem getting to me. He strapped a chain to the tow hook on my truck and to the tow hook on his and gave it a gentle tug. Nothing. The spinning of his tires started making it icy and he could get traction in that spot anymore. So he got some slack in the chain and tried yanking the truck out, nothing. I knew this was a bad idea, but I wanted this truck out and it was freezing. So he gets up to my bumper and floors it in reverse. SNAP! The tow hook rips off my truck and the chain ricochets back towards my step-brother’s truck and cracks the windshield, dents the fenders, hood, bumper, and…got the truck loose. Hooray, I was free! My step-brother…pissed! Did I learn my lesson, yes…bring more friends to help dig next time.
-Trent
Tags: mud, snow, stuck, truck
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February 22nd, 2010
This post may very well explain a lot of things about me, and that’s kind of what I’m afraid of. Let’s take you back until I was about 10 or 11 years old. We had a trampoline at my house in a gravel pit. As much fun as that was, we also have a basketball hoop and the trampoline was always pushed over to the hoop so we could dunk the basketball. Now this trampoline was on concrete, a very unforgiving surface.
After years of use, the trampoline started losing springs. One by one, these sharp edged medal objects flung wildly in the air. Now these springs help keep the trampoline together. What happens, when there’s no springs, the trampoline starts to fall down. At this point, we had about half the trampoline missing, but that doesn’t stop us stupid brave kids. We still dunked the basketball. On this day there were three of us on the trampoline and we all bounced each other as high as we could, one wrong bounce though and I went flailing through the air and slammed head first into the concrete where there used to be a trampoline. My breath was gone for a solid minute and obviously my head hurt. Basically I was dropped on my head from about 15 feet high, and this one I can’t blame on my parents.
-Trent
Tags: Brain Damage, Fall, Trampoline
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February 15th, 2010
Previously, I had talked about a different go-kart fail and I’m hear to tell you about another go-kart fail. When I was 14 I had started racing go-karts. Just for fun, but of course my competitiveness started taking over. I was new to this game and didn’t know all the ways you could cheat(there were plenty). I was consistently coming in 3rd, 4th, and 5th place. It was decent, but there were two brothers who always dominated. Anyway, I was in a little 5HP kart that wasn’t that fast and required you to always have the gas down, no matter what! To slow down, you’d keep your foot on the gas and jam the brakes. It helped keep the revs up and made it pretty fun. After awhile of getting nowhere, I decided to try out the shifter karts. Now these were quite a bit faster and could hit 100mph given the room. On the straightaways at the track I raced on, 90mph was possible.
I had tried the shifter karts out around the neighborhood(going after the cats again) and after some yelling gentle persuasion, my neighbors said no more and I had to take it to the track. On a side note, 75mph on a private lane is awfully fun. So there I am on a practice day enjoying myself in this much faster kart. What I hadn’t realized is that I had gotten into the habit of riding the brakes a little bit. I could let off the gas in these karts, but in the karts I really had to use the brakes a lot more since I was always on the gas. I go around the s-bend leading into the straightaway and floor it. This track configuration had a very sharp 120 deg. turn at the end of the straight. I’m going as fast as I can go, let off the gas, jam the brakes and….nothing! No brakes there at that point it’s a choice of either running into a hard barrier or going off into the dirt. I chose the dirt. However, at this small town track, the dirt is maybe 5 feet long and goes straight into a chain link fence. After that it’s a pile of dirt. The dirt runoff is also downhill, so it did nothing to slow me down. SMASH! Straight through the chain link fence and not much slower than my 90mph top speed on that straight. As I hit the fence I downshifted once and that slowed my speed enough that I didn’t slingshot out of my kart when I hit the dirt hill. There I stood, waiting for the track workers waiting to tow me in with a sore neck. I don’t remember the exact words, but the track worker was obviously more concerned with the fence than with my safety. Fences must be more expensive than lawsuits.
After that I still raced the 5hp karts for awhile and once I figured out how to cheat drive better, the two karts in front were a bit more accessible.
-Trent
Tags: Crash, Fence, Go-Kart
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February 9th, 2010
A wise man once said “You’re never too poor to afford good toilet paper.” Apparently those in my house haven’t heard these words of wisdom because we, a hearty midwestern family, are using SINGLE PLY TOILET PAPER. Never had the harrowing experience of using single ply toilet paper? I won’t go into detail, but it’s like walking across a frozen lake: at any moment the ice could break and you would be plunged into doom.
What’s even worse about this is that the manufacturer of said useless toilet paper had the audacity to put the word “value” on the package. There is no value in this stuff. I use two or three times as much. Is it because it costs next to nothing and the good stuff costs? Maybe. Is it because you need 8 feet of it per wipe? Probably.
If needs be, live on Top Ramen, but never ever EVER buy single ply toilet paper. Heed my words my friends and heed them well.
-Yom
Tags: Sinlge-ply, Toilet Paper
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February 2nd, 2010
Somehow, some way, I’ve managed to remain rather unscathed in terms of broken bones. The only time I broke a bone was in high school, I broke my toe. How you say? Racing a car…on foot.
I was in auto shop and thanks to an incompetent teacher, work rarely got done and most of the time was spent playing cards in the back of someone’s car or attempting burnouts. Eventually this became tiresome and so we started racing behind the shop. There wasn’t much room to do so as there was a big dip at the end of a straight that’s only a few hundred feet long. Eventually it got down to people betting on who could beat who. There was one individual who thought his Camry was particularly fast. It had a non-functional dual exhaust, 17″ wheels, unpainted body kit, and a couple subwoofers. I decided to take him on, but my car was faster without a doubt. Time to challenge him on foot!
The stage was set, my 5’10″ 180-lb. out-of-shape body was going to race a mid-90′s Toyota midsize sedan. I was talking the talk and I was ready to walk the walk(without stretching!). He was revving his motor, I was revving mine(I make awesome engine noises). Ready…set…go! I take off with a burst of speed, and my Sketchers claw at the asphalt for traction. The delay for the power to go through his automatic transmission and to the wheels is playing in my favor. I take the lead and I know I can’t outrun him forever, but this few hundred feet were mine! Three mph was quickly surpassed in my in-head speedometer, here comes 4, and then 5! As I get close to the finish, a car pulls out of a garage and I come to a screeching halt! More worried about slamming into the side of the car than anything, I didn’t think about how to stop, I used my pinky toe to take the force. There was too much noise from his furiously revving car as it flew past me so I didn’t hear a crack, but I felt something. I was so close, I was going to win! Instead, I limped away with a broken toe. In retrospect, had that car not seen me and stopped, my opponent would’ve probably gotten in a low-speed collision. I’d like to think my broken toe saved his life.
-Trent
Tags: Broken Bone, Car, Racing
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January 30th, 2010
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting the acquaintance of pretty twenty-four year old girl from Park City. I was quite taken with her, and I’m positive that she wasn’t taken with me. Why do you ask? Because she met me on the one night that I should never meet anyone new. That night is bad meal night.
What is bad meal night? It’s a diet mandated night in which my brother and I cram unholy amounts of food into our gullets, then muddle around our house in a food induced stupor. No one should attempt to communicate with us on bad meal night because we can’t (by that I mean won’t) return the communication. That is bad meal night, now back to the blond.
They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, and I made mine by cramming four slices of pizza, half an order of “Italian” cheese bread, half a bag of Doritos, a liter and a half of soda, chocolate bundt cake and a chocolate shake into my face hole. Fail? Oh no my friend, epic fail.
-Yom
Tags: Bad Meal, First Impression, Girl
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January 29th, 2010
When I was about 13 years old, my parent’s bought me a little go-kart. It was pretty awesome at the time, it went a blazing 20mph, and kinda sorta sat two people. After terrorizing and chasing the neighbor’s cats for awhile, I realized they were a bit more agile than I was and faster. This doesn’t bode well with a mischievous teenager like myself. Time to start modifying the go-kart.
Since I was on a limited budget at the time, I stuck to the basics, hotter spark plug, synthetic oil, removing the restrictive exhaust pipe, and taking the air filter off. Now I was blazing around in a puttering, stuttering, 21mph go-kart. Those cats were finally going to be mine! As you might imagine, the kart ran like crap, but man did it sound cool! Over time, running no air filter, driving through dirt, and feeding my go-kart Mountain Dew(hey, it gave me an added boost), the throttle stuck open. This was a cheaply made go-kart that had brakes that barely stopped it when you weren’t on the throttle. I went straight into a forest. Tree after tree was battering this go-kart with me along for the ride. And by ‘along for the ride’ I mean getting whacked in the face with tree branches. Suddenly this 21mph go-kart was hitting speeds much faster. I couldn’t tell you exactly how fast it was because my only gauge in the kart was an outside temperature gauge, but I could tell you it was 74-degrees that day!
Finally a bigger tree slowed the kart’s progress enough for me to jump out. The front of the kart started to climb the tree until it’s momentum stopped. I went and shut off the motor. Now of course a happy ending to this story would involve me blowing the kart up and never looking back, but no, I continued to use that kart. It was a little tricky because the throttle was always open, you’d pull the rip cord while lifting the rear of the kart, tires would spin madly, you’d grab the front roll bar and jump in as you dropped the kart to the ground. To stop, just hit the kill switch. And I went on to a semi-successful racing career in go-karts, with the exception of going through a chain link fence at 80mph(another story for another day).
-Trent
Tags: Crash, Go-Kart
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January 20th, 2010
This story goes back, way back. Well, back to when I was about 5 years old. It’s a memory I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. It’s also the reason they put safety buttons on automatic gearboxes in cars.
My parents stopped at a friends party one night while my older sister and I were in the car. It was a nice night, back in the day when it was ok to leave kids in the car for 5 minutes and stand up in the front seat of the family minivan with no seat belt(different story for a different day). I was throwing a fit that my parents left me there with what I assumed was child eating monster aka my sister. She was trying to keep me under control, but it was useless because I had super-child strength fueled with sugar. Instead I kicked the car out of park and into neutral. Oh, I forgot to mention a couple minor details, we were parked on a steep hill and the parking brake was not engaged. Only seconds later, I had managed to involve myself in my first 6 car accident. It’s a crunching sound unlike any other. Our car backed into the car behind us, that car hit the car behind them and so on until someone finally was smart enough to engage their parking brake.
Everyone at the party was understandably upset, as for me, hysterical! That’s exactly what a parent needs when explaining to the police officer how this all went down…me crying my eyes out. The host of the party sat me in front of cartoons on the TV and gave me a popsicle to calm me down. It worked, until I dropped the red popsicle on their nice white carpet. Then, hysteria set in again. As I recall, I don’t think I was ever left alone in a car again. My mom even hired someone to keep me safe company on my drives to work now. Okay, I made the last part up, sort of.
-Trent
Tags: Cars, Property Damage, Young Fail
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January 18th, 2010
Here it is, my first post where I was not taking part in the actual failing, I just witnessed it. It goes a little something like this…
I was at an auto shop a few months ago and I was watching them work on one particular vehicle. It was a new vehicle that I liked and so I was intently watching. They had the car up on the lift and were fiddling with something, not quite sure, but one of the mechanics who had to have been in his fifties took a part from the car and walked over to a table to mess with it. He scurried back to the car to put the part back on. He was staring so intently at the part he just meddled with that he didn’t realize that low-hanging tires could meddle with your head…and back.
This is a situation where you shouldn’t laugh, but it’s just too difficult to withhold. His feet went over his head and he landed flat on his back. His flailing arms also knocked over a bench nearby. It was an epic fall if I’ve ever seen one. Immediately you think, “That was hilarious” then you realize this guy isn’t a young’n anymore and wonder if he’s okay. Since he was fine and more shocked than anything, I can laugh about it now, right?
-Trent
Tags: Auto Shop, Tire, Witness
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January 14th, 2010
This one should be filed under the “obvious” category, but we are talking about me here. I was at a friend’s house recently and he has some dogs that are quite nice until you open the front door. One of them goes ballistic and starts biting. For this reason, we usually exit out the garage. This situation was a little different. This time I went first and the lights weren’t turned on.
This is where you say to your self, “He’s going to run into all the ski poles on the wall”. Not so! Instead I fell off the edge of a set of stairs. I didn’t think this would be too bad of a fall, but somehow I hit everything within a 5 foot radius. I had a huge bruise that extended from my hip to the back of my knee(how did I get hit from behind?!?), a bleeding gash on my shin, and a messed up ankle. All this from falling off the edge of two stairs with nothing in front of me to hit, nothing to the left of me for miles, nothing on the floor, and the closest thing to the right of me was several feet away. I’m starting to suspect that my friend did some sort of ‘Mortal Kombat’ kick. I’m reviewing the (non-existent)security tapes now.
-Trent
Tags: Fall, Pain, Stairs, Watch your step
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