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Bob Frank's avatar

All the airplane stories remind me of one that I overheard from a random person, while sitting on an airplane. The guy behind me was talking to the guy next to him, and it went something like this:

Now, the San Diego airport is right on the edge of the water. Some of its runways even extend out into the bay. And this buddy of mine, he was out in the bay one time, just out there, him and his boat, for Labor Day weekend. Doing nothing and enjoying it for all he's worth, like you do on Labor Day weekend.

After a while, the sun's starting to go down, he needs to get home. But he finds that the boat's motor is dead. He tries three, four, five times and can't get the thing to turn over. So he gets on his radio and radios to shore, "someone help me, I'm stuck out here in the middle of the bay with a dead motor." But no one's answering.

What he didn't realize was that the speaker on his radio was dead, but the transmitter was working just fine. They could hear him, but he couldn't hear them. So after a few calls for help that he got no response to, he starts to feel a bit desperate. He goes and gets his flare gun, and fires an emergency round in the air...

...right into the path of an incoming jet liner. Which bursts against the cockpit window, dazzling the pilot. The guy pulls up in a big panic and radios to the tower, "help me, I'm under attack!"

So my buddy ended up getting "rescued," and detained, by a very unamused Coast Guard cutter whose crew were not happy about having their Labor Day celebrations cut short to deal with the idiot on the water who didn't know how to look before firing his flare gun.

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Rather Curmudgeonly's avatar

The Drachma/Deutschmark got an actual LOL out of me. Great stuff all around.

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