Look! Down on the Ground! It's ... Stupor Man ...

So, my morning was little more interesting than I had intended.

I was to watch my grandson, and my wife had taken her car to work. Why this matters is, the concrete guys aren't done and our driveway is still a deep pit, through which I cannot get my little car, which has been parked in the garage. So my wife has been leaving her car home and taking the bus/train to work. Today, however, she had an appointment and needed her wheels. I was to take the bus downtown and fetch her car so that I could get to silat class, which is temporarily being held at Toby's.

I forgot this.

So, I puttered around, got dressed, and since my son and daughter-in-law live only a mile and a half or so away, allowed five minutes to drive there.

Walked outside. Oops. No car.

Okay, I'll take the bicycle, I can make it if I hurry.

No air in the tires.

Okay, there's only about a ten foot-gap across a little rise between my driveway and my neighbor's driveway. I'll just take the Mini over that and out to the street that way. One of the arbor vitae never took off and I'd cut it down, there was enough room between the pine tree and the other greenery, right? No problem.

You ever have a notion that, even as you do it, you know is a bad idea? Even a stupid idea?

The ground clearance on the Mini is about seven inches. The dirt over which I intended to drive was a) soft b) covered with twenty years' worth of bark dust and c) not flat.

Anybody want to guess what happened? You there, giggling like a demented hyena?

Yes. You are correct. I got stuck. The technical term is high-centered. As in, "I high-centered the fucking car!"

It wasn't going anywhere, Hercules couldn't have pushed it free, and certainly I couldn't. Aside from not having the strength, there's no place to get a grip on the sucker, half of it is plastic and you can't grab it put any pressure on it. I could have picked up my old VW beetle by the front bumper and moved it. Not the Mini.

I called my daughter-in-law and allowed as how I wasn't going to make it. Tried the jack first, no go. Got assorted tools -- a shovel, a hoe, then a pick-axe -- and began to dig it out. The pick-axe was the best tool.

Using a pick-axe, by the by, while kneeling in the dirt, trying to swing it horizontally underneath a car buried to the frame? Put that on my list of jobs-I-don't-want, too. I felt like an archeologist trying to unearth a big dinosaur fossil using a whisk broom ...

It started to rain. (Well, okay, it was only a drizzle, but that does make it more dramatic, so I'll leave it in.)

Skinned knees, a couple of blisters, and an hour and a half later, I managed to clear enough dirt from underneath the car -- done by feel, since I couldn't see what I was doing -- jack it up again, and roll it clear and back into the driveway. Then back into the garage.

No damage to the Mini, and no harm, no foul. Only to my self-image.

I don't know what I was thinking.

Stupid is as stupid does ...