foot to the floor- no the other foot

On these lines - let me tell you what I learned from my father years back before I could even drive.

He was doing brakes on his Anglia - and we lived in a house on the top of a pretty good sized hill in NJ. Our driveway was such that you didn't come up when snow was forecast. The driveway went straight into the garage.

Long story short - he's done whatever it was he was doing - he ramped it up to change the oil - and backs it off the ramp and LOOK MA! NO BRAKES! Down the hill he goes zippity quick looking a bit like a hermit crab trying to get out of a shell while trying to stop the thing from rolling and finally he reconsiders his actions and leaps back into the car - it goes zipping down the drive, across the street over the curb before he manages to corral the car and turns it sideways in the neighbor's lawn to get it stopped.

Dramatic at the time - but still cannot tell the story without ROFLMAOPIMP. A couple of sacks of grass seed - and a few beers and laughs later all was made right.

Moral of the story - always check the brakes before you move the car.

A couple of years ago I had been working on the window switches and center console of my SLC. When finished, I inadvertently left the car, which was backed into the garage, in neutral.

Several days later, deciding to use the car for an errand, I reached in through the open window and turned the key. The car fired right up, and I went to to a quick chore while it warmed up. No more than sixty second later, from around the corner on the side of the house, I thought I heard a change in the timbre of the idling car. When I convinced myself it WAS changing I stepped towards the garage, and moved around the corner in time to see the car about half way through the open garage door. Headed down the front drive, with the driver's door window open, and me, standing dumbstruck, on the passenger side! The car proceeded down the drive, across the street, up the opposite curb, between the curbside light pole and the neighbor's oak tree, luckily, and stopped practically dead center in the middle of their front lawn. I got to the car, jumped in, and reversed it back from whence it had come. With the car shut off, AND IN PARK, I stepped back out to the driveway, surveying the scene. Not a soul to be seen. The street was absolutely empty, mid morn of a sunny Saturday, nonetheless.

Then the realization of my true luck dawned on me. The open curb, where my car had cleanly split the pole and oak uprights, was normally occupied by that neighbor's seldom driven pickup. A somewhat dilapidated 1968 Chevrolet 3/4 ton that was typically used once a month, if that. Breathing a ragged sigh of relief, I closed the garage, saving the previously anticipated SLC ride for a calmer moment.