With A Bocephus Sticker On His 442

Coop had a great post the other day on being a child of the 70's and America's fascination with all things motorized during that era - it seemed to resonate with a lot of people, myself included. It brought back one memory in particular: You see, when I was a kid, I took things apart. I mean, I took everything apart - my toys, old appliances, my bike, you name it. I vividly remember being yelled at for taking apart the blender when I was eight years old. My parents, to their credit, understood that I was simply trying to understand how things worked, and proceeded to buy me toys that addressed these urges - Lego, Robotix, Capsella, Erector Sets, Radio Shack project kits - you name it, I had it. Every year for Christmas I could count on getting one of the giant deluxe Lego sets, which was the coolest thing ever. (I still remember my Dad cursing when he would step on one of the small Lego bits when he was barefoot - those tiny 1 x 2 blocks were easily obscured in the long, avocado-green shag carpeting that came standard in every middle class suburban house back then). Still, these were only toys, and I wanted the real stuff - my Mom took to buying almost-certainly-broken small appliances for a quarter apiece at garage sales solely for me to take apart, since it was cheaper & easier than replacing her own. The flip side of this affliction was that I liked to build things - after I took the appliances apart, I would strip any usable motors, lengths of wire, switches, etc. and put them aside for later projects. I wouldn't have access to stuff like project boxes, soldering irons and two-stage epoxy until years later, so most of my breadboarding was done on slabs of cardboard cut from old boxes, and everything was held together with copious amounts of tape - to this day, one of my family's affectionate nicknames for me is "Dr. Tape".

Anyways, I remember seeing top-fuel dragsters on TV one weekend during summer vacation, and it was the coolest thing ever. The cars looked liked the fantasy-series Hot Wheels I had in my prized fold-up Hot Wheels City playset (thanks Grandma!) And the coolest thing: drouge chutes! On a car! I instantly knew that that was the most awesome part, so I set out to do the only reasonable thing I could do, given my penchant for tinkering: put a parachute on my bicycle.

The first stage was to gather materials: The body of the parachute was easier than I thought - after considering how severe my punishment would be if one of the good umbrellas went missing, I happened to notice a large rubber ball that had been floating around the house/garage/basement - it was one of those big cheap ones, close to 3 feet around, that they sell in the huge wire cage in the toy section of the discount store for a couple of bucks. It had a slow leak and was going flat, so nobody would miss it. I cut it neatly in half, and bingo - there was the chute. The lines were provided by another important staple in my bag of tricks - a length of Mom's spare clothesline. (Mom took to buying lots of extra clothesline too, since I used most of it). I carefully cut holes around the perimeter of the ball and tied lines through the holes, then tied all the lines together. Voila! Now I only had to deal with the problem of deployment. After considering various complicated ways to attach my new parachute to my banana seat, I decided to go for simplicity: I tied it around my belt, and crammed the chute in my back pocket. When the time arrived, I would simply reach back and yank the chute free.

I got up a head of steam on my Huffy on the sidewalk in front of my house. When I was sure I was going roughly close to 300+ MPH, I reached back, grabbed the corner of the chute that was sticking out of my pocket, and flung it out behind me. I heard the satisfying *whoomph*! of a parachute rapidly filling with air. It worked! In fact, it worked a little too well - I stopped instantly, and the bike was yanked out of my hands and kept going. It felt like I hovered in the air for a full second before I came crashing to the sidewalk, incurring one of the many full-body "concrete exfoliation treatments" I was to receive in the course of my youth. I particularly remember hurting my left hand during this episode, and 20+ years later, when having the same hand X-rayed after an injury, the doctor commented "So, you've broken this hand before". I told him no, not to my knowledge. He said "Oh yes, at least once before, a long time ago". My mind instantly flashed back to the parachute episode, and I couldn't help but think "Damn, I bet that was a cool-looking crash".