Bad luck. nothing more and nothing less.

The Mid-Ohio show for 2018 is now just a memory. A good memory, I don't see how that show can ever be anything less. I ask two things for the weekend; to have a safe trip to the show and a safe trip home. Nothing else matters.

I post this today, a day after I got home because I feel it will have more impact.

I have said it before, that I am a creature of habit. When I find something that works, I will do it the same way again. Every year I attend Springfield I take boxes of Canadian stuff down for the free table. Stuff I dig out of the local dumpsters. Little value but something different to add. I gather stuff up during the year and to keep it separate pack it in milk crates away from other insulator stuff scattered around the yard. A plan that has worked well for something like 15 years. I empty the crates at the show, then pack the treasures coming back in the same crates.

This year I deviated just a little. My dumpster access has been limited to one dumpster. The job they are working on has resulted in only polymer stuff being replaced. Polymer was the only option I had if I wanted to continue the tradition : put on the free table - take off the free table. Actually in my case it's more like a trade table. Since the Polymer things are long and didn't fit well in milk crates, I used a recycle box about twice the size and half again as high. I had about 20 pieces of prime rubber packed in. Some of you may have noticed the row of less than desirable rubber chickens lining the floor under the free table. I had put them there before the show even opened to give them the maximum exposure to attendees. I will add, that I have learned that almost everything put on the free table, goes to a new home. Even so, I was 50/50 on whether these would go. I was prepared and expecting to put them back in my van and bring them home again. I would not leave something like that for the show host to deal with.

Before the show opened I met up with Connor Stoehr who had a couple suspensions for me. These were the first items and went in the bottom of the now empty recycle box. Good thing because of their weight. As the weekend went on, I bought a few insulators, picked a few of the free table adding them all to the same box. I do not over wrap things as the box doesn't move until I get it home and it's time to unload. A single wrap of newspaper just to prevent glass on glass contact. Sunday morning I started home. The box was full with the suspensions and 30 something pintypes.

I got up late on Monday and in the afternoon unloaded the van. My wifes' vehicle and she needed it for work a little later. I took the stuff out and the last thing to be removed was the box of insulators. They always get premium placement in the van, right in the centre where the ride is the smoothest and so are usually the last to be unloaded.

I'm old. A 60 -70 pound box isn't as light as it was 20 or even 10 years ago. I opened the side door of the van and slid the box over to the edge. Heavy enough but manageable, it wasn't going far. A couple feet to my right and a foot and a half down. Even in a controlled drop there wouldn't be all that much damage.

I like plastic over paper boxes. The milk crates stay outside for decades without any ill effects. Same with recycle boxes designed for outside use, they last for decades. Plastics are in the news of late for that very reason. They take hundreds of years to break down. Precisely the reason they are a love hate thing. Very versatile and handy, but you can't get rid of them. Over time some types go brittle. More than once I have picked up some half full plastic jug that has been sitting outside in the sun for a year or two, only to have the handle crumble when I grasped it.

The old recycle box is to the edge of the van, I take a deep breath and slide it out. It is almost all the way out and then all I am holding in one had is a small piece of the box. No warning, the edge of the box just snapped clean off. Seems a recycle box is for plastics and papers, maybe empty cans and a few glass bottles. Not 70 pounds of porcelain.

The other end of the box had not cleared the van so it was not a simple straight drop of a foot or so. Nope, I'm not that lucky.

The are things I learned in school. Kinetic energy, potential energy, Newtons first, second and third laws, gravity and lastly but not the least, Jimmys luck all came into play at once.

Because the box hadn't cleared the van it was turned 90 degrees and there was enough height available to land on its end. All the glass shifted and crashed against that side. Then all of those forces came into play and the box continued to rotate another 90 degrees to end up upside down, a second crash landing but now with the two heavy suspensions now on top crushing everything beneath them. Two for the price of one, usually a good thing, right? Only three insulators escaped the second coming and were thrown clear.

I stand there for a few moments then reach up and slide the door closed to keep the rain out. Then went in the house for a nap. [id=550892372;next episode]