Tuesday, December 24, 2013

23b: Cruising the Town

The 23b repair sled was on-call for the evening but the boss seemed to be having a good night and it looked like we were not going to have to work. For a delivery guy who only works one night out of the year, he has a pretty good record of satisfied customers.

Anyway, it was a quiet but cold Christmas Eve here in Princeton, so I thought I would take the team out for a spin around town. I laid down the better half of my leftover burrito, harnessed the team and popped the whip just over their antlers. They turned and looked back at me as if to say, "Are you crazy??"

"Uh...fellows...?" I said, as the sled suddenly lurched forward.

We zipped out across the yard and banked up to the left, clearing a split rail fence and clipping the top of the neighbors hackberry tree before leveling off at a couple hundred feet above an asthmatic barking dog on Cadiz Street. I could see the Christmas lights around the court house as we cruised out along North Jefferson.

As we approached the city limits, the team suddenly dipped and made a hard left. I realized that we were lining up on the East bound lanes of I-69, specifically, the overpass under Providence Rd. I pulled the reins hard as the steel and concrete whizzed just over head. We just squeaked by an oncoming eighteen-wheeler and buzzed the top of a family in a white SUV with fuzzy antlers on the luggage racks.

It was close...I counted 8 points.

We made the turn back towards town and stopped next to Wal-mart where I went in and bought some donuts and a couple of banana moon pies for Rude and Nasty and we were off again, just missing the power lines along the highway.

Passing just south of Main Street on the way home, I could see a white SUV at the Police Dept. with a mess on it's roof. I guess I know where the other half of my burrito went.

He's not called Nasty for nothing.