Car Wash

A few summers ago, I was driving along a busy street here in Boise and noticed that there was a free car wash in a nearby parking lot. Considering that my car was filthy and in much need of a cleaning, I decided that it was the perfect opportunity for me to take advantage of this free service. So I pulled into the parking lot and after a short wait, it was my turn. You must understand that it had been a long while since I had last washed my car, and there were some terrible spots where birds had left their marks and had practically become engrained in the paint. Thankfully, those giving out these free car washes (I think it was the baseball team from a nearby high school) were more than willing to help me out, and after about 20 minutes of intense soaping, washing, and scrubbing, my car was finally clean. I was elated! I now had a clean car, and I didn't have to spend a dime! I drove off as happy as can be.
Later that day, I joyfully related my experience to my mother, who promptly asked me how much money I had donated to them. WHAT??? I was supposed to donate money to them?? I thought it was a free carwash! Suddenly everything made sense. That wasn't really a free car wash. I was supposed to give them some sort of compensation for their labor, and I had just driven away! I was terribly embarrassed, especially since cleaning my car had been no easy task. I learned some very important lessons that afternoon. First, I should just plan to wash my own car in the future. Second, there really isn’t any such thing as a free car wash.

Groceries

Once when I was younger, I was shopping with my mom at a grocery store called Hy-Vee. For those of you who live in the Midwest, I'm sure you're familiar with this establishment. I was eight or nine years old at the time, so I was still at that age where grocery shopping was a grand adventure and my official duty was to convince my mother that we needed to bring home a box of Lucky Charms or an extra gallon of ice cream. On this particular day, we were walking through the fresh produce section and I was holding on to the edge of my mother's cart, happily walking by the fruits and vegetables. To this day I have no idea what took place, but I happened to take a quick look back at my mother, probably to ask if we could take home some of those delicious looking kiwis, and to my horror the owner of the cart I was holding on to was not my mother! An gentleman upwards of of fifty had taken her place, and I was walking right along through the store with him! As a young little chap, I was horrified. I had no idea how this man got there or why I was holding on to his cart. All I knew is that I wanted to find my mother and I wanted to find her NOW! I immediately burst into tears and began frantically running up and down the aisles, trying to find her. In my calm pursuit I had managed to forget that she was probably still in the produce section, so after a prolonged search of thirty seconds or so I managed to find her. Oh what a sweet reunion it was. I think that was the day that I became the official pusher of the cart, and I can assure you that from that day forward, I was sure to keep close tabs on my mother's location in the grocery store.

Fire

My grandpa is somewhat of a pyromaniac. For as long as I can remember, he's always had at least 2 boxes of matches in the backseat of his car, and someone who hasn't seen him in a while might ask him, "How is the burning going this year?" He owns quite of bit of land about an hour outside of Boise, so whenever the weather permits (i.e. no wind and not above 85 degrees), he burns old sagebrush or tumbleweed or trash. I was with him on one of these burning excursions and we decided to burn a big patch of dried up weeds. At first, everything was going fine. We kept a close eye on the fire and made sure we could put it out if the need arose. Unfortunately, that need arose sooner than we thought when an unexpected gust of wind took the fire into a rather large field of sagebrush. If you've seen sagebrush before, you'd understand the extent of our issue. Sagebrush is a very dry plant and burns in a huge plume of flames that spread from plant to plant. There was nothing we could do. The plants started burning and started a chain reaction that we couldn't stop. There wouldn't have really been a huge problem, except that on the other side of this field was a canyon, and if the grass in this canyon caught fire, we would have a huge prairie fire on our hands. That wasn't too desirable, so we went to the end of the field and started smashing down grass and doing everything we could so that once the fire got there, it wouldn't spread. Thankfully there was also a small stream between the sagebrush and the grass, so that helped our efforts immensely once the fire got to the edge of the field. The heat was unimaginable. The smoke blinded me and it was so hot that I could barely breathe. We had to stay though and stomp out any patches of grass that caught fire as it seemingly did everything it could to cross the stream. Our efforts paid off. We were able to keep it from going across the stream. As we left the field, the firetrucks were just pulling up. "No big deal," we told them. "We've got it all under control." The next day, we drove back to the site of the burn. There were still patches of ground emitting smoke from the heat, and you could see a huge black spot in the land from miles away. Good thing that stream was there!

Emergency Landing

A few years ago, I flew on a small private jet to a town in Utah with 2 of my cousins, my Grandparents, and 2 of my aunts. We were there to see the Boise State football team play Utah State, and needless to say we were very happy when Boise State walloped Utah State. The first half of the short 1-hour flight back home went by without incident. I was sitting in the closest passenger seat to the pilots where I could see the flight instruments. All of the sudden, I noticed one of the gauges that was showing oil pressure was moving. It kept moving until it showed that the left engine of the plane had completely lost oil pressure. All sorts of awful things were going through my head with my limited knowledge of what this situation meant for us, and it didn't help that the pilots hadn't noticed the gauge. Finally it started beeping and they noticed it. They pulled out their pilot guidebook to figure out what to do. Then they leaned back and told the seven of us that we had completely lost oil pressure in the left engine, and that they would have to turn it off and make an emergency landing. It was the eeriest sound I've ever heard when they turned off the engine. It basically sounded like they were shutting off the entire airplane in midair. We were close to Twin Falls, Idaho which has a small airport, so we made a rapid descent and landed about 8 minutes later. We were greeted by a firetruck when we hit the runway and were given a free rental car to make the 2 hour drive back to Boise. The left engine was covered in oil, and it turns out one of the oil supply lines had exploded. Whew! Close call.