Technology, Innovation & Telecomm

I should have known when my friend Bob went ’splat’ on the ice of the hillside, that trouble was ’round the bend.

We were helping another friend, Steve, move some items from his in-laws-to-be that were destined for his new home. Mainly, we were there to move a refrigerator out of the basement to it’s new residence a few miles away. Oh yeah, it was dark outside too.

The first clue that trouble was ahead should have been the fact that it was January. The next should have been the glare of ice on the lawn leading down to the back entrance to the basement. Funny thing. Did you know that when it snows then melts, then freezes again, the result is ice? Three (relatively) intelligent adult males and that somehow didn’t strike a note with any of us.

Anyhow, as we made our way down the hill and around the back, poor Bob took a pretty hard fall on that glassy sheet, sliding toward the side of the house. Steve and I were having our own troubles staying upright when we finally made it into the “safety” of the basement. All’s well, right? Nope. Besides the fact that the ceiling height in that basement was about 5 feet (the net result being that we all banged up our foreheads multiple times), we still needed to get the refrigerator back to the truck. The thinking was, after our adventures getting to the basement, that we would strap the ‘fridge to a hand truck and try to take a slightly different route back to the U-Haul (or whatever the vehicle of choice was, I can’t quite recall) so as to avoid the nice skating rink on the hillside. Even though there was still snow on the ground in line with the path we were planning, it seemed like a safer bet to have it under foot than the other form of frozen water. We thought it was a great plan at the time…

Steve chose to steer the appliance from behind while Bob and I guided the thing from the front. That part was going ok, and we were making slow but steady progress until we got to the little rise in the lawn that required a bit of heaving on Steve’s part and a bit of shoving on Bob’s and my part.

Now, you need to know that Steve had elected to wear treadless deck shoes for our little moving adventure and you also need to know that neither Bob nor I knew this.

While Steve was heaving to help pull the ‘fridge up the little rise, his shoes’ lack of tread became an issue…and both his feet slipped out from under him. Remember, he had the hand truck and appliance tipped toward him while he was backing up this little rise. When pressure overcame friction, the whole shebang landed on top of him. After a second or so of surprise, I lost my composure. If I had a camera and had been cruel enough to think of it, I would have taken a picture or two. It was like something from a Saturday morning cartoon. There was a refrigerator laying in the snow, with two arms extending from the sides at the top and two legs sticking out of the bottom…and Steve yelling for us to get the thing off of him. He didn’t sound like he had been hurt and frankly, I was laughing so hard that when Bob and I got the load off of him, I had to sit down in the snow to regain my self control. Thankfully, the hand truck and the mushy ground had helped to prevent any injuries to poor Steve.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story is here, but I can tell you that snow, deck shoes and refrigerators are not a good combination in the middle of January, especially when you add three supposedly intelligent males to the mix…