Monday, May 30, 2005

Drinking in the heat

While Steve, the bastard, was out fishing while I was stuck inside at work, he reminded me of something else. He mentioned he didn't understand the idea of drinking out in sun & heat like that, 'cause you'll dehydrate. Which brings up the story...

A few years ago while my son was in the Civil Air Patrol, his unit was helping out at a big air show. Mainly crowd control, but also parking planes, etc. Weekend over, he told me about all the drunks they had to deal with. Happily none were hostile, but take a hot sunny June day and people drinking beer, and you get drunks. The prize of the bunch was a guy standing in a taxiway with a camera held to his eye; they were trying to get him to move and he kept muttering "Almost got it" as he stood there waving back & forth. Since there was nothing across the runway but crowd they had no idea what he 'almost had', but he HAD to move; there was a B-17 a hundred yards away waiting for them to get him out of the way so they could take off.

This guy was so far gone they finally had to pull a golf cart up beside him and tip him over into the back. He went to the medical tent, and the bomber finally took off, and my son now had a real understanding of why Grandpa the state trooper hated dealing with drunks so much.

At least the drunks at the airport weren't driving around the place. Though the trip home for some of them...

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