I never write to Dead Runners since I'm not supposed to be reading my Dad's e-mail because he gets lots of girl pictures, but he's gone for awhile and I hope he doesn't find out that I told you what I saw him do. Mr.  Miller reminded me of what my dad did just last week:

"...he once rode on the tailgate of a pickup truck with his wheel at speeds
up to 30mph measuring a course."

My dad asked my and my friend Matt Odell if we wanted to go for a ride while he did some race course measuring. He had this little wheel that was supposed to tell him how far he had gone. So we went with him.

We drove over to a small college that has a private drive going all the way around the campus. Dad drove into a parking lot, and then got out while we were playing on our Nintendo Game Boy games. We were in his old Ford pick-up truck, and he had attached a snowplow on the front just in case of bad weather.

Well, Matt's pop only has one leg. He lost the other in an accident some time ago. These days he gets around on crutches, but for a long time he rode in a wheelchair. It seems that my Dad had gotten the wheelchair from Mr. Odell somehow. He had fixed up an attachment device so that he could put it on the front of the snowplow, and now he rigged it up.

Then he asked us who wanted to ride in the wheelchair and measure the course, but neither one of us were very eager to get in front of a big old pickup truck on a cold, blustery day. When we both declined, he looked us over.

I'm not that big yet, so he told Matt, "I want you to drive me around this road...can you do it?"

Matt is only twelve, but he wasn't about to say no, so he shook his head "yes".

"OK, listen. I'm going to pre-set the speed by pulling out this little handle," he said, "This is the choke. It will give the engine a little bit of gas, but it will be steady. You don't have to put your foot on the gas at all, just let the clutch out easy, and when I raise my hand hit the brake and we'll stop."

That sounded easy enough. He got in the wheelchair contraption, fastened his seatbelt, and then strapped a double shoulder harness into the buckle. He was set. He looked like someone riding on the cowcatcher of an old locomotive.

We got into the cab. Matt looked at the steering column and the pedals. The engine was already churning from the choke setting. He looked at me.

"What do I do now?" asked Matt.

"I thought you knew how to drive."

"I do, but because Pop only has one leg, all of our cars have automatic transmissions. I don't know how to shift gears."

"That's easy...just push in that pedal on the left side and pull the handle down, then let go of the pedal."

Needless to say, our start wasn't very smooth, in fact it was downright herky-jerky. We bounced around quite a bit, but Dad seemed to take it in stride.

It wasn't very long until the engine began to whine. Dad started to pump his fist into the air.

"He wants you to shift to second gear," I shouted, "Push in the clutch and push the handle up!" Seconds later we had achieved a tremendous degree of acceleration. I knew that Dad was excited because he kept waving his hands in the air. The speedometer read twenty, twenty-five, then thirty miles an hour.

Then it happened...or sort of... a whole bunch of things happened at once. I guess the most important thing was that we hit a speed bump with the snowplow at thirty miles an hour.                                          

Pieces of concrete flew through the air. Dad was yelling "Got them, STOP,
got them, STOP the truck!" I think he meant he caught a bunch of the
concrete pieces in the air. We tried to stop but couldn't.

We didn't find this out until later, but evidently Dad's bottle of
Wissahockon Spring Water had rolled off the seat when we hit the speed bump
and lodged under the brake pedal. Unfortunately, the other end of the
bottle was resting on the accelerator. When Matt stepped on the brakes, the
bottle leaned against the accelerator, and we began to speed up.

Dad was jerking his arm in the air. "Shift, OH SHIFT," he was screaming, so
I yelled at Matt to downshift, then reached over and pulled the gear lever
straight down. There was a slight grinding sound and suddenly the truck
leaped ahead.. Oh no, now we were in third gear.The speedometer crept up,
and up, to fifty, then sixty, then seventy. Matt was fighting to keep us on
the road as we exited the campus and careened onto the main boulevard.

We didn't know what was wrong, so I reached over and began pushing buttons.
Ithought I could shut off the choke and maybe we would slow down. All that
happened was that the snowplow raised itself over the hood of the trunk, and
now we couldn't see. Plus, Dad's arms began to flail and strange long words
floated through the air. White smoke from the burning brakes left a trail
that poorest tracker could follow.

I rolled down the window and looked out. The road appeared to veer off to
the right, so I yelled at Matt, " Ease right, ease right". All that did was
take us out to the Inner Loop of the Beltway.

Traffic was really strange on the Beltway. People would pass us, then slow
down for awhile, then take off again. I guess you don't see a gray-haired
man holding a measuring wheel riding in a wheelchair attached to a snowplow
elevated over the trunk of a 1973 Ford pickup at seventy miles an hour very
often on the Beltway.

Pretty soon the police came. They turned on their red and blue lights and
their sirens and followed us for a long time. It was pretty neat. We
thought we should pullover, but didn't know how to stop, so we just kept on
going. The longer we drove, the more police cars came. I kept yelling
adjustments to Matt, and we were navigating the Beltway.

I'm not sure how long it took, but it was after the helicopters showed up.
There were also some National Guard armored cars that came too. Anyway,
after a while we were quite a sight to see with the Humvees, helicopters,
armored cars, and police vehicles. I was really enjoying myself.

Somewhere on the Key Bridge we came to a rolling stop...I guess we finally
ran out of gas. A policeman ran up to us and showed us his gun. "What do
you think you're doing?" he shouted.

"Mr. Hickman asked me to drive his truck," replied Matt, "so I did."

Well, they put us in the police cars, and they brought me home, and they
took Matt home. I'm not sure where Dad is right now, but he hasn't been
home since last week. Please don't tell him I told you about this.

Thanks,

Andrew