True Story

[thomas_sorrentino]

Just when I think I've seen it all in this business. A Chinese guy orders a new gravestone for his dog. I have no idea what it translates to? But we all got a chuckle out of it, and I thought I'd share it with you guys.

[giderich]

Doggone the luck. Tom, that's funny.

http://www.doggonegraphics.com/

[NH Bill]

Good one Tom!

Perhaps the dog's dying words (born in this country and native US English speaker?)

[Randy Dupree]

made in america???

[bubblerboy64]

Made my day Tom. You know we almost named Emma that. It's what I said when Ethel brought her home. Funny. Have you ever had to engrave stones using the Chinese pictograms? The actual written Chinese language

[NH Bill]

Originally Posted by Randy Dupree

made in america???

I'm guessing the stone itself came from China... a bit of irony in that.

[Don Meyer]

Last summer we were traveling back to Florida from NH. Traveling south bound on the Garden State Parkway, we were in the center lane. The road was 5 lanes wide at that point and we started moving over to the far right to make the transition onto the NJ Turnpike entrance. Just as I started to move over, my steering wheel CAME OFF. Traveling at 60 or 65 MPH your heart wants to stop! My wife pulled her seat belt off, jumped up and said "what can I do?" I said sit back down and put your belt back on. We were towing our Hummer and I had already put my turn signal on. Believe it or not, all traffic had already slowed to let me move over. If any of you have had the steering wheel off in your rig, you know that the shaft drops about an inch and you can not simply push the wheel back onto the splined shaft. So there I am with no steering going 60 or so, and heading for a fairly sharp (30 to 40 MPH) left turn. With the turn signal on, I started pumping the breaks as the slope of the road now took over and we're drifting right with no steering. I just kept pumping slowly and evenly on the brakes, as we're drifting further right we started across a bridge with a 4 foot high concrete wall along the right side.
We continued to slow now as we're on the shoulder. We finally came to a stop about 6 inches from the wall. I couldn't even open the door to get to my big tool box. Fortunately I have a small tool box under the sink with the tools I needed.

You ask, why did the steering wheel come off. Simply put, stupidity on my part. I replaced the wheel the year before with a new VIP unit. A bit smaller diameter so I could see all my gauges OK. When I put the new one on I never tightened the nut. So over a year since I installed the new wheel, the nut backed off and finally came off completely. This allowed the shaft to drop, and guess what, NO STEERING! Fortunately there was a small hole in the end of the shaft that allowed me to insert a screw, pull the shaft up and tighten the nut down. Once we were able to move again, I moved up just enough to get to my big tool box, and get the right size wrench to tighten the nut.

It wasn't till we were back on the road again that it dawned on me what a disaster this could have been. My heart was going a "mile a minute" every time I thought about it. I guess God was watching out for us!

Moral of the story....if you remove your steering wheel for any reason, be smart and tighten the nut before you put the horn cap back on.

[Rob Robinson]

I hope you bought a lottery ticket that day Don. Talk about lucky. If it had happened to me I know I would have found the next rest stop, pulled in and changed my underwear.

[Bill Pape]

Originally Posted by thomas_sorrentino

Just when I think I've seen it all in this business. A Chinese guy orders a new gravestone for his dog. I have no idea what it translates to? But we all got a chuckle out of it, and I thought I'd share it with you guys.

I think it is spelled wrong. This word was not in the Spelling Bee

[Don Meyer]

Hey Rob,

I didn't think of buying a lotto ticket that day. Probably should have done so. Maybe I'd be driving a brand new Bird today. Or maybe I would have bought the BB property and continued building Birds.

I was really scary after it happened. While I was pumping on the brakes and drifting over, I stayed cool and calm. No panic. Just watched my right mirror and drifted over. A few seconds later and I would have been into the left hand turn with NO steering and into the double level steel guard rail around that turn. Perhaps God has a purpose for the rest of my life.