I've often joked that if I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. And the fella in the following tale was saying the same thing by the time he reached the end of the day involved here. As he added, "Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed."
Said Mike, "I tried raising and lowering it, shaking it, jerking it, banging it with a hammer, and everything else I could think of, but it simply would not latch down. Finally, in desperation, I sprayed everything with WD-40, then lowered the receiver onto the ball again, and it latched with ease. Go figure."
Once on the road, Mike drove from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Lake Skiatook, about 30 miles away. The moment he got to the boat ramp, it started raining heavily. He sat for about 30 minutes, with no letup in sight, and then called his daughter, asking her to have a look at the National Weather Service radar.
"She told me there was a large cell in the vicinity and that it probably would be at least a couple of hours before it passed," Mike explained. "Thoroughly disgusted, I drove back to Tulsa...and into bright sunshine."
After arriving home, he checked the radar himself and discovered that the cell his daughter was referring to was due south of a place called Ponca City...nowhere near the lake. The radar did show a couple of popcorn showers that had popped up over the lake but then had fallen apart right after he left.
"Needless to say," he noted, "I was somewhat perturbed to learn that my daughter was geographically-challenged."
Back to the lake went Mike, where he was graced with a partly cloudy sky.
"I was boating alone," he said, "so I kicked off my new sneakers, put on my flip-flops, and backed the boat into the water. Because I drive a Suburban, I can't see the boat without opening the cargo doors. No problem. I opened the door, backed down the ramp, and got out of the truck to get the boat ready to go in."
Without realizing it at the time, he had kicked one of his new sneakers into the water as he got out of the truck. Luckily, it landed right side up. He waded around to the back of the truck and checked its cargo area before continuing the launching evolution.
"Sure enough, I had neglected to place my tackle box in the boat," he noted. "As I reached for it, I accidentally hit the door-lock button in the cargo area on the rear post. It has a 15-second delay, but I didn't hear the clunk of the door locks. In any event, now I had a locked truck, with the keys in the ignition, sitting in water up to the running boards on a busy boat ramp, and a new sneaker slowly floating away.
"First things first. I fired up the boat, chased down the sneaker, and then tied the boat to the dock," he continued.
Mike then waded back to the truck and found there was no way he could get into it without breaking out a window.
"I found a boulder about the size of my head," he explained, "and decided to break in through the window on the right side of the rear-seat door. I swear that glass must have been bulletproof. I literally ended up throwing that boulder at the glass, and it literally bounced off without a scratch. After eight or nine attempts, I gave up and decided to try the front-seat passenger window. The boulder went through the glass like a knife cutting through butter, scattering glass as if I had thrown a hand grenade into the truck."
The first thing the boulder hit inside the vehicle was the console, knocking the lid off its hinges. The boulder and a lot of glass ended up in the driver's seat.
"I do not want to discuss what those objects did to the leather in the seat," he said. "I'll cry later."
OK, so his truck still was in the water. Twenty minutes and several lacerations later, Mike had removed the boulder and enough glass from the driver's seat to allow him to get into the truck and drive it out of the water...a big relief.
"I now reminded myself that, despite the fact it was 3 p.m., my intent since 6 a.m. had been to try and catch a few bass," said Mike. "So I hopped into the boat and went tooling across the water. I was so angry with myself that all I wanted to do was haul butt across the water. I did this for about an hour and had cooled off enough to try fishing. I found a point and half-heartedly fished it for about 20 minutes, all the while thinking about all that glass and blood in my truck. Needless to say, I gave up and headed back to the landing."
In Mike's absence, a park ranger had come by, noticed the shattered window, and left a note advising that he had notified the police of a break-in. Luckily, he also had left his phone number, which Mike called to cancel the Red Alert.
The kicker came when he had the boat out of the water and was getting it ready to tow. A game warden drove up and had the audacity to ask if he had had any luck.
"Let's just say I was VERY vocal about my luck," noted Mike, adding, "He never even asked to see my fishing license."
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