Wipeout – An Ode to Military humor

If you have read my most recent posts, you know that I have been writing about my exploits and experiences after arriving at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca.  My most recent post may have been a wake-up call for some of you that own or have previously owned Ford automobiles.  I owned exactly two.  And both of them were nightmares from hell.  Though, I haven’t told you about the second one yet.  Story for a different day.  Last time I talked about my Ford Tempo from hell, or should I say my wife’s Ford Tempo from hell.  Cuz, after all, she is the one who made me buy it.  But enough about that Ford because today I am going to talk to you about family bonding.  Whenever I had some free time, I liked to spend time bonding with my children.  That usually meant taking my daughter and my son with me on a Hash run or on a hike into the mountains on Fort Huachuca or on a bike ride on the base.  My story today is about a bike ride that my daughter, my son, and I enjoyed (sort of) one leisurely Sunday afternoon on Fort Huachuca.  We left our house on Nelson circle and proceeded in a westerly direction on Winrow Road.  When you travel in a westerly direction on any road on Fort Huachuca, you generally go uphill because the elevation changes from lower ground to higher ground as you travel further west toward the main post.  When we reached Arizona Road, we turned right and proceeded in a generally northerly direction toward the Fort Huachuca Main Exchange and the Commissary.  While we were traveling in that generally northerly direction on Arizona Road, our ride was pretty smooth and pretty easy because the terrain was generally level ground.  In other words, we didn’t have to go uphill, but we didn’t have to go downhill either.  As a result, we were taking it easy because that first stretch of our ride had been a little tough in the sense that it was uphill.  Both of my children and I were well adjusted to the altitude at Fort Huachuca and we were in pretty good shape because we went to the Hash every week.  But that uphill ride was still a little tough for the kids.  Of course, all good things must come to an end and it was the same with that easy ride along Arizona Road.  After we passed the Commissary, we turned right onto Hatfield Street.  Hatfield Street ran downhill in an easterly direction toward the Van Deman Gate, which exited Fort Huachuca to Highway 90.  The downhill slope of Hatfield Street was generally greater as you got closer to the main post of Fort Huachuca.  Thus, the slope tapered significantly as you proceeded nearer to the gate and Highway 90.  Now that I have properly set the stage for the downhill portion of our bike ride, I can begin to tell you the real meat of the story.  Cuz what preceded was just the warm up.  Oh yeah.  I haven’t told you anything yet.  The really fun stuff (well, for most of us) is about to begin.  Oh, by the way, you do remember the Master of Disaster, or Trouble with a (capital) T?  Oh, hell yeah.  You just had to know that he played a part in this story.  A rather significant part, I might add.  He may be the first to disagree.  In fact, his disagreement might be quite vocal.  But I am quite sure that you will agree with me that his role was central to this story.  I did mention that Hatfield Street was a downslope?  Okay.  Good.  Please remember that.  Cuz that little piece of information is significant.  The downslope didn’t begin until after we had passed the Commissary.  Things were going along fine until we hit the downslope.  As I mentioned earlier, the initial downslope is more significant closer to the commissary but it tapers the further away you go from the Commissary.  That’s great.  Except, we weren’t going that far.  We were planning to ride down as far as Rucker Street.  When we reached Rucker Street, the plan was to turn right and proceed in a southerly direction back to Winrow Road.  We stopped briefly when we turned onto Hatfield Street because it was a downslope.  I instructed my daughter and my son to use their brakes gently while going downhill on Hatfield Street until we reached Rucker Street.  They both said that they understood my instructions.  So much for instructions.  The best laid plans of mice and men.  Shit goes to hell in a handbasket mighty damn quick when panic sets in.  And let me tell you something about panic.  Panic is evil, wicked, mean and nasty.  And it will catch hold like a wildfire in dry brush with a fifty mile an hour tailwind pushing it.  There ain’t nothing or no one can stop it.  Well, panic grabbed hold of the Master of Disaster like a wildfire.  When his bicycle picked up speed, too much speed, way too much speed, he didn’t gently nudge the brakes.  Oh hell no.  He slammed on the brakes.  If that bike had been a car driving at eighty or ninety miles an hour, you would have heard those tires screeching.  There would have been black tire marks all up and down that sidewalk.  However, none of that shit happened.  No.  Nada.  Just instant stop.  To make matters worse, I think that the Master of Disaster only hit the front brake but not the back brake.  Say it ain’t so?  Oh, I’m afraid it is.  As a result, the Master of Disaster went sailing over the handlebars of his bike and landed on the sidewalk, face down.  It was an instant and total wipeout.  The worst part was that his nose must have hit first because it was scraped bloody raw.  Then, to make matters worse, I couldn’t avoid the wipeout and ran over his outstretched wrist.  That made him hurt even worse.  I took out my first-aid kit that I always carried whenever we went hiking or running or biking and patched his wounds.  But I couldn’t patch his pride.  The wipeout had really done that in.  We walked our bikes.  The rest of the way down Hatfield until we reached Rucker Street, then we rode our bikes the rest of the way home.  Other than that panic-driven wipeout.  We experienced no other exercises in futility during the remainder of our bike ride.

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