Wizardofid's misadventures and other stories

[RuadRauFlessa]

It is more like a near-death-ratio... Rambo chooses to live close to edge not that an edge actually exists in the case of the awe inspiring Rambo

[wizardofid]

It is more like a near-death-ratio... Rambo chooses to live close to edge not that an edge actually exists in the case of the awe inspiring Rambo

Perhaps we can pit Macgyver against Rambo....

[RuadRauFlessa]

Hmm might be a fair match... Dunno though... While Macgyver will whip out his multi-functional-all-composing-pocket-knife Rambo will just pick up a big mother of a browning one handed and blast poor Mac into smithereens.

[wizardofid]

Hmm might be a fair match... Dunno though... While Macgyver will whip out his multi-functional-all-composing-pocket-knife Rambo will just pick up a big mother of a browning one handed and blast poor Mac into smithereens.

No no

I don't mean a match up like that.I mean give each 20 South Koreans to mow down.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Aaaah but once again..... big gun vs multi-functional-all-encomposing-pocket-knife.... not much of a challenge. Besides we will have to break Macgyver into episodes which means he will be hanging between kills for a week at a time.

[wizardofid]

As much as I love destruction as the next guy, I have to admit it is the only thing that I was good at.

I was still learning about physics during my destructive rebellious years. I only barely scratched the surface of what physics could do in my capable hands at time. This left me with numerous theories and experiments to achieve during summer and winter holidays.

Carnage was my middle name and unintended cause my surname. Perhaps impressing my dream girl is not a good idea especially with so many items in ones back yard to achieve the carnage with.

Well let me tell you the story of how we met. It was not exactly love at first sight. It will become evident as the story progresses. My fascination with launching my own little satellite into space was achieved at first with an air compressor and a home made potato gun.

Eventually pocket money to buy potato's and the healthy supply in the house dried up. I think this is where it should have stopped, but I was still an aspiring NASA aeronautical engineer, with goals of reaching the upper stratosphere.

Well at first I wanted to be in the pilot seat, but Hannibal insisted on being the test pilot after seeing the after effects of what gravity can have. So I stuffed the potato cannon with a wet rag I found in the garage I used to clean up a recent petrol spill, while assembling my potato gun and poured in some more juice. By my calculations the fumes from the rag will not be enough to get him where I needed him to be.

Perhaps the matches I glued to Hannibal's hand and the carefully rigged match box resulted in him being the first human torch to reach the upper stratosphere, or least by my calculations. Not surprising that the make shift OK bazaar plastic bag parachute failed to open right away. When it did however it too was engulfed in flames and the fishing line deemed adequate for space and beyond burned releasing Hannibal from the failing parachute. Not like that was of concern to him, a much bigger problem came about by being on fire and his rapid uncontrolled decent back to earth.

While this was taking place, to my horror the potato gun has turned into a flame thrower, ejecting copious amount of ignited fuel, (2 liters of petrol was perhaps a tad much) at least 2 or 3 meters into semi unoccupied space. This event took place during winter so the grass was dry and the tree where I previously aimed the gun at to see if I can't hit some birds was dry with large amounts of leaves on the ground.

Fortunately the flamethrower came to a sputtering stop. I was lucky enough that my parents asked me the day before to cut the dead branches and pick up the leaves to be burnt later under supervision with the newly provisioned petrol for the potato gun.

So I was not in a whole lot of trouble, the burnt out tree on the other hand was not unscathed. The magically disappearing potato stash needed some explaining. “I had some friends over and decided to make chips.” It seemed like a good excuse at the time, but my planing skills needed work. Two bags of missing potato's is a whole lot of chips with only a 750ml bottle of oil.

Well at least we benefited from the missing potato's as there was a whole lot of magically sprouting potato's in the garden the next summer.

But back to Hannibal's imminent date with gravity. His downward projection as luck would have was aimed directly at the neighbors ugly step sisters plastic swimming pool. The poodle must have seen it coming because he was already hiding under the table. Unbeknownst to me my future girlfriend and ugly step sister was lying in the pool. When Hannibal crashed into the pool.
They were surprised as much as I were, I more so when she stood up walked over to hand me back Hannibal.

That is how we met for the first time. Hannibal was never the same after that and the poodle hid under the table at the mere sight of some thing flying over head.

The moral, flying projectiles are not all bad, when pointed at unintentional targets.

[Tribble]

retreats to her psychiatrists couch for a much needed discussion

[wizardofid]

retreats to her psychiatrists couch for a much needed discussion

What is so shocking about that, that is about as romantic as it gets for a 14 year old kid...

[Tribble]

I am so glad that I was not into romance at that age. I think I would have been put off relationships for life

[wizardofid]

I am so glad that I was not into romance at that age. I think I would have been put off relationships for life

perhaps I should tell you about our go cart mishap

[Tribble]

I would rather you didn't - but then curiosity dictates that you must

[wizardofid]

I would rather you didn't - but then curiosity dictates that you must

Will do.

I felt a title change is order, better describes it's contents.The initial idea was a story thread. Not that any one reads it, except tribble.

[Tribble]

Tribble likes to know how her friends' minds work. This provides valuable insights into those workings. Besides - it is weird. Wanna get the kitty's attention - then weird will do it.

[wizardofid]

Go cart 101
If carnage is my middle name perhaps my first name should be accidental. The names is fitting as you know by now good ideas, bad execution. Perhaps most evident I have not learned from my mistakes they usually end up getting bigger.

It is not so much that I plan on bigger bangs, I just find the most appropriate experiment and turn it into a opportunity that knocks on the proverbial danger-do-not-enter door. The door has all these flashing yellow lights on it, I can just imagine Tom Cruise jumping out from behind the door and the song danger zone starts playing.. Then the my lovely lass walks in and take my breath away plays and the fancy door and Tom Cruise fades to the background.

After that the door quickly resurfaces, and Tom magically disguised as the devil, smiles and invites me in. From that moment onwards I am in my happy zone.

Now that particular day my lass came to visit we were 18 at the time and just started working at the local you guessed it the local OK bazaar as tellers. My parents went on a 2 week trip to Zambia, but just before they left they gave me an early birthday present. A new go cart the old one was getting badly beaten by the local club racers.

I didn't know it when I met my lass she was a adrenaline junkie too and a avid go cart fan. Her older brother belonged to the local I was going to. That is how I got involved in go carting. So the new go cart arrives in freaking paint by number boxes.

Personally I just wanted to get the thing on the track. So the lass and me spend the next two days building the damn thing, perhaps I should rephrase dammed thing. It caused us nothing but trouble. Paint by numbers is not exactly straight forward. Funny that the main box said “some” assembly required, not lego building.

From my short two year experience with go carts, bolts don't hold long. So we ordered some custom bolts and were welded onto the body. This made sure nothing comes apart during races.

Final tasks of priming the fuel lines and brake lines and we were ready to go, this was an excellent little cart, handled perfectly in corners and accelerated beautifully out of them. My lass took it for a test drive and beat my lap time by 30 seconds. I wasn't completely impressed by that. I just need to better control my speed.

That is when the door hit me with Tom smiling in the background, I still have the old go cart..Just last week I removed the engine to sell to help pay for the new cart.

I still had a worthless piece of junk in the garage that has out live its purpose. Just before I met my lass I joined a local amateur rocket club, GHPR.

I have being working on some prototypes, as I had some stability issues with the hybrid rocket and the release valve between the solid core and liquid tank leading to the combustion chamber was faulty which could potentially lead to a rather big bang. So I settled on a single phase solid core motor, but the burn out was too fast. So every month I worked on new designs and tested them.

Eventually getting it right, it burnt beautifully. I was left with about 12 useless rockets as they burnt in less that 40 seconds.

Well what do you get when you strap 11 rockets to the back of a go cart. Some thing that breaks the sound barrier, and turns your lass white. Shortly after meeting my lass we moved to the agriculture holdings just outside of town 5 minutes drive from the lass. My dad got this lovely big plot of land with no one living close by. Perfect for testing rockets. Illegal drag races on the piece of land next to ours that contained an old runway used by a closed microlight flight school, not too sure.

That didn't stop us. The tarred 1,5 km runway was still in good condition, with a 50 meter sand bed on each side. This would be perfect for our little experiment. I welded some special clamps to bolt down the rockets to the back of the frame. Like in the movies I added two clamps sets on each side of the cart. I didn't realize at the time that this was a potential flaw in my design.

So being a little cautious I strapped one rocket to the cart, first wanting to check what speed I could achieve. Speedometer we got from a scrap yard goes all the way up to 240 km sort of a personal joke, we made on track day, that I have a smallish V8 strapped to the back of the cart.

Personally I was not ready to get those speeds any time soon. So I tried the first one, I think we got about 2km per hour with a 30 second burn and moved about five inches

Clearly not enough power so I added 4 rockets and that go us moving to 40 km per hour and a good deal down the runway. I say us, because she sat on my lap

That left me with 7 rockets left, two on each side and three at the back. My physics calculations was not exactly up to scratch, so I added the new rockets my dad helped me design with the longer burn.

So I decided to remove those on the side with the 4 new rockets. This time the lass the decided not to join the land speed test.. My aim was down the runway for the sand bed. When things go wrong and in my case the went wrong straight away. the two rockets on the left failed to ignite. Those yellow lights
on the door were there for a reason, and Tom Cruise was tempting me.

So much for Hollywood movies. I veered off the runway and was aiming straight down to the building on the side of the runway. Lucky for me it had a large open passageway linking two rooms together.

Unlucky for me I was picking up speed on uneven road, and trying to counter steer was getting harder. Just as I reached the building I was up to 60 km per hour, slamming on the brakes will be completely pointless I still have about another 15 seconds worth of burn time left on the rockets at the back and 45 seconds on the ones on the side.

I aimed straight for the passage, however my problem was far from over, a wire fence was coming up quickly and a choice had to be made, so I aimed straight for a pond next to the fence hoping that will help in a last desperate attempt to save my self from the fence.

I didn't bother looking at the speedometer, it is pointless trying to break the land speed go cart record.
With a rather larger splash into the pond, did I finally come to a rest. White faced I emerged from the pond with my lass's face blood red. “Don't you ever do that again !.”

Come to think about perhaps I should not have answered.

“What, veer off the road and aim for the pond.”

The final speed on the stuck speedometer an estimated 93km per hour.

The moral, answering someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown with sarcasm, when you just got into major trouble doesn't get you laid, contrary to popular believe.

Screw you Tom, it took two weeks of pleas to get me out of the mess you got me in.

[Tribble]

Bwahahahahahaha now this sounds more plausible than the other stories. Entertaining read

[wizardofid]

Bwahahahahahaha now this sounds more plausible than the other stories. Entertaining read

Why thank you dear.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Morning ppls.... Damn being 10min late in the morning makes me 2 hours late for work
Not fun at all.... Damn the bloody traffic. Why can't they just make sure that the traffic lights are working. Then at least they won't have to pay so damn much for people to stand at intersections to regulate the traffic in a rather poor attempt.

[wizardofid]

Morning ppls.... Damn being 10min late in the morning makes me 2 hours late for work
Not fun at all.... Damn the bloody traffic. Why can't they just make sure that the traffic lights are working. Then at least they won't have to pay so damn much for people to stand at intersections to regulate the traffic in a rather poor attempt.

Sigh wow....a fail of note !

[hamin_aus]

being 10min late in the morning makes me 2 hours late for work

Wow, that's amazing... 10 minutes in your world is like 2 hours in regular time...

[wizardofid]

On top of the mountain is a relative term

Being on top of the mountain is a relative term, depending where you find your self when saying it. I seldom achieve the euphoria of coming out top, I usually end up bruised and battered on the bottom of the mountain, getting hit by numerous what was I thinking branches on the way down.

The way down the mountain, is another minor glitch in my life expectancy, and seriously questions the probability of reproducing. Well I am not sure I want to be reproducing little Evil Knievels, hell bent on destruction and carnage, they don't need to proof Isaac Newton is right, I am already an honorary member of that club.

In 1509 Abbot John Damien, declared he was going to fly from France to Scotland with nothing more than wings made with chicken feathers. I should have learned from history, well I did sort of. I was not going to give up my dream to reach the upper stratosphere just yet. I joined a hang gliding club, and got my self two excellent second hand ones in great condition.

I would meet up with the club every second Saturday of the month at Hartebeespoort dam. Spend a few hours souring in the sky and head home. I spend hours up there thinking about going higher before a thunder cloud would interrupt.

So I pushed my dream to the back of my mind, and just enjoy getting away from it all. Two years later I was nowhere close to achieving my goal. Money got tight as the lass was expecting a little Evil Knievel. We finally got married and moved to the plot of land behind my dad with the runway on it.
The lass got a job at a marketing company, I completed my studies soon after and joined the large family construction business. My dad fronted me the money to buy the plot and build a nice home where the original building was next to the runway. We eventually broke up the old runway filled up the sand beds at the ends of the runway.

I started building a workshop for my self as I had numerous hobbies and from time to time they needed to be repaired and this would be my new happy zone. I had to give up a few hobbies as there was simply no money or time. The lass suggested that hang gliding be the first one to be proverbially be hammered to the wall for the time being. Because she is pregnant, she can't join me any more and I think she knows my track record being accident free for the last two years won't last. The lass did not want hang gliding to be the one that breaks the track record.

With a lot of convincing, well really just sulking for days on end, made me finally give it up. A few months later our little Evil Knievel was born. I think that is what it feels like to be on top of the mountain. That was however short lived. The lass's parents moved down to George, so she took a trip down to them, unfortunately I couldn't join because I had a few meetings and site inspections that needed to be completed.

It was also the finals of the then Bankfin Currie cup, A Transvaal and Northern Transvaal final. Being in the blue corner and my work mates in the red corner, there was much rivalry. I arranged for the boys to come over to my place to settle it for once and for all.

The Friday was completed without much effort, the lass phoned the evening to check in, and to make sure I behave my self on Saturday. The next day I needed some provisions for the big encounter when I just happened to bump into a old hang gliding buddy of mine.

We have been chatting for a few minutes, when I asked him about hang gliding and the club and if that idiot Chris is still there. Idiot Chris, is a special guy and some times even capable of beating me on the stupidity O meter. One memorable Saturday idiot Chris didn't lock his glider supports properly and found him self falling down a steep slope, like a screaming little girl. He broke both his legs. Idiot Chris a funny guy, but his stupidity was more comical.

My buddy explained that it was the wife's fault for not being able to continue with it. Much to his amusement I was also forced to give up my dream. So I invited him over for the big game, of course he has to check with his wife first.

Later that afternoon my hang gliding buddy phones me up to get the details. The wife will not becoming with, he can go on one condition that he sleeps over, doesn't want him driving home drunk. I think the devil was working over time as his evil plan was finally coming together. About an hour later my buddy arrives, and we investigate the plot. Finally we arrive at my work shop, that is when my buddy notices the two hang gliding kits in the corner.

I point out that it is amazing that the cat sized rats have not carried it away yet. I pull out the two bags to check for damage, that is when the nostalgic brain wave hits. I joke with my buddy how would he feel about doing it for one last time. He jokingly agrees perhaps it would be fun to try it one last time.

I point out there is an old mine dump a few minutes drive from here that would be perfect for what we have in mind. I have forgotten what Tom Cruise looks like, he sure as hell didn't, I can see him waving again. Perhaps that was the sign, that it was a bad idea.

After the game and after every one left. We were sitting outside enjoying a beer. I suggest we head out early tomorrow morning before there is too much turbulence we head out to the mine dump and check it out if the launch area is good before we will attempt one last flight.

At 3 am we eventually hit the sack and only woke up at 10am, bit late for our date with destiny, but nonetheless we head out to the mine dump and has a nice slope on the western side. The problem facing that direction was a rather large lake and a even larger growing informal settlement.

To the left was an open field with not a lot of trees this would be a perfect spot to touch down if needed. We didn't bother with the right side as we were not planning on going that direction. We decided we will drive over there and walk back to the dump. The dump is a good 500 meters high so it is nearly perfect. About 2 hours of investigating and walking up and down the dump we find our self at the top again set up the gear. Still a bit hanged over from last night we rehydrate and have a bite to eat.

After having eaten some thing we set up the gliders, ready to take flight, a final check if the gear is secure. We approach the slope and take to flight. Instead of going left we were pushed right for no apparent reason. Neither one of us noticed the rather strong cross wind that picked up. There is no point trying fight this cross wind and it is dangerous so you just have to go with it. My house is 10 minutes drive to the right but so is the local prison half in between as well as numerous houses.

So I suggest to my buddy the wind conditions are good enough to make my house. Both the gliders had two way radio's installed shortly before the lass and me gave it up so that we can stay in contact with each other as well as the make shift ground control with the club.

We could have aimed straight for the ground at the dump but there were to many equipment and trees. So he agreed that we should aim for the house. I find it funny that the devil helps you into trouble, but from there you are on your own. Needless to say we were a bit panicky about getting there. As we might not have enough altitude to work with but so far the wind is nice and strong. The wind died down just as quickly as it changed direction. That just before the prison. With no other choice we landed in the prison yard much to the surprise of the local inmates and guards. Lucky for us I knew the warden as I do some maintenance there every few months.

After a lot of explaining and a few laughs he drove us back to the car. Well I guess you can't expect that your car will be waiting for you there this long, in a deserted field. With car stolen with a lot of pride to swallow I had to inform the lass the car is missing, presumed stolen and stripped. Her complete Enya cd collection was in the car, I guess that is only good thing that happened that day, I hope Enya gives that criminal much joy. But you don't dare tell her that, I already served my time on the couch.


The moral, don't trust old friends when standing on your mountain top, the slope gets steeper and slipperier.

Insurance excess is there for a reason, to curb idiocy.....

[Tribble]

Lol - nice. I must admit - with the stories before this one I was expecting something far worse. But entertaining none the less.

[wizardofid]

Lol - nice. I must admit - with the stories before this one I was expecting something far worse. But entertaining none the less.

No I was thinking about the same thing, but you know with having a wife around screwing up becomes harder...

I will have to dig around my past for some thing.

[Tribble]

How can a wife prevent anything - you are an individual and can do what you want regardless of what she thinks

[wizardofid]

How can a wife prevent anything - you are an individual and can do what you want regardless of what she thinks

I can, but that still depends on where I want to sleep in the house, the bedroom would be nice

[Tribble]

I dunno - my couch is very comfy Don't mind sleeping there at all