Well I guess it is only fair that I share a story about myself. This story always gave Jennifer a chuckle. This morning our friend Dale sent me a text talking about a story that appeared in their newspaper today that reminded him of my little mishap.
A guy in Wyoming left a can of pepper bear spray in his car it got overheated and exploded. The can went thru the windshield and ended up 200 ft from the car. Thankfully no one was hurt but the guy was trying to figure out how to clean his car.
My incident fortunately did not result in any injuries or damage but it was not funny at the time, but with time it has become humorous. It happened the second time we lived in Lafayette, LA so was probably around 2003-2004. Now some background is needed to understand how this mishap happened.
Our Lafayette office had just gotten some new company vehicles. They were Dodge Dakota’s (SUv’s). Now we had a young high school summer helper that was working for us and we gave her the job of taking the various equipment (fire extinguisher, flashlights, first aid kits, etc) we had in our old company vehicles and putting them in the new vehicles. She did that but she did not properly secure the fire extinguisher in this particular vehicle.
Well I had a big meeting to attend in Houston. Lafayette was about 4 hours from Houston, so instead of driving over the night before the meeting I just got up real early and drove over in the morning.
I just get into the area of Houston that was close to the Marathon office and I get off the 610 loop onto the city streets and as I make a turn off of 610, I heard this loud hissing noise coming from the rear of the car and I looked in the rear view mirror and I see this large white cloud blowing up in the back.
Thankfully the vehicle had electric windows and I cranked all of them down and the cloud starts blowing out the windows and is thankfully staying out of the front seat. It still had not registered what had exactly happened, but my vehicle had to look like something out of a Cheech and Chong movie with this cloud of white dust blowing out the back windows.
Thankfully their were no cops around and I just kept driving to the Marathon tower. I got parked in parking garage and then I discovered what had happened. When I made the turn the fire extinguisher rolled out of its holder and had discharged. The pin must have already been pulled and when it rolled out it discharged. We carried 5 lb extinguishers so it had a good volume of powder. Well I did not have time to deal with it just then. I just rolled the windows up and went to my meeting. Fortunately none of the powder got on me.
During a break in the meeting, I called the Lafayette office and told our office administrator to tell the summer helper to wear grubby clothes to the office the next day, because she was going to be getting dirty. I filled her in on what happened and she was laughing.
So I attended my meeting (which was all day) and when it finished I got back in the car and started headed back to Lafayette. Well I get to just outside the west side of Lake Charles, LA and there is a LA state trooper hanging out under a overpass. I was not speeding so did not think anything about him. All of sudden he hits the lights and wants me to pulls over. Now I am thinking “what the hell”and also broke out into a cold sweat realizing that the back of my car is covered in white powder.
If any of you are familiar with Interstate 10 it is one of the main drug smuggling corridors in the country. It is not unusual to see cops with cars pulled over and them there with canines and tearing these cars apart looking for drugs.
Thankfully I was close to a exit and I pull off Interstate 10 and into the first driveway that I find. I do everything like you are supposed to. I kept both hands on the wheel and kept still and waited for the trooper to approach the vehicle. He did not approach immediately, so I was assuming he was maybe calling for back up. Anyway he finally came up to the vehicle, it was dark so he was shining his flashlight into the vehicle as he approached. He asked me if I knew why he pulled me over, I said no sir I was not. He said my vehicle had no license plate.
Well when the extinguish discharge it had blown the temporary license tag that was taped to the back window off. I explained to the officer that the car was a new company vehicle and what had happened with the fire extinguisher. I asked him if I could exit the vehicle and I would get the temporary tag for him to see. I also told him that when I opened the door there was likely going to be white powder everywhere. He was kind of smirking and when I opened the back of the vehicle a pile of extinguisher powder fell out and I fished out the temporary tag that was buried under a pile of powder. Well he was kind enough to let me go with a warning and wished me luck on getting all that powder cleaned up. I am sure he and his coworkers had a good laugh over their coffee and donuts that night.
Well after I got my pulse back down and the visions of being put in a backwater Louisana jail for cocaine smuggling out of my head, I got back on the road and made it back to Lafayette. It was a very long day. When I told Jennifer what happened she had a good laugh at my expense.
The summer helper did a good job of getting the car back into shape the next day.
Well enough of humiliating myself for today.
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