My first thought was ... "Don't Ever Eat Hot Links in the West !"
This story below was posted by someone awhile back.
I don't think you could even make up a better story than this.
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. . . Here's some more detail on how this fiasco happened:
I ate lunch last Tuesday at a restaurant located on a nearby trout stream. Hot-link sandwich and a beer. Although I'd told my wife I was merely going to lunch, I got a wild hair and started scouting the river for some likely spots.
A couple hours later, headed home, I stopped at a liquor store and bought a 12-pack of Killians and a pack of smokes. Then I headed home on a back road that I knew well and had driven often.
At this point I became aware of some acute gastrointestinal problems. Bad hot links? I needed privacy, fast, and I turned off the road and up a side road. After taking care of my business, I decided that I had put the truck in a position that I couldn't back it up, and would have to continue forward.
For a couple miles, the road seemed totally reasonable. It was headed in the right direction and Tuesday was a beautiful Colorado spring day. So I continued on. After all, I had four-wheel drive! For reasons I can't really explain, I continued up this road even when it became more difficult. And then another wave of nausea hit, and I blindly kept going up this road. Why I can't really say, except that my judgment was clouded by illness.
I'm not a 4-wheeling kind of guy. I have it on my truck for snowstorms, mud season and for the occasional trip over a rough road. But performing tricks on hazardous mountain roads has never appealed to me. I'd rather die by sliding off a barstool than sliding off a mountain road.
Soon I had hit snow, the terrain became undulating, and I was sliding down the mountain -- skiing in my truck, for chrissakes! I crashed the truck several times, but couldn't turn around. Then more nausea. Finally I came to a place where I couldn't continue. I was utterly off the road and lost as hell. And physically and emotionally exhausted. I keep camping gear in my truck, as I always do, and collapsed in my bag. Don't believe I ever slept that night because I was still dealing with nausea and, of course, fright.
At 5 a.m. Wednesday, I got up and started a fire. Plenty of fuel to be had, and soon it was blazing high. I got in my truck, turned on my flashing lights and began belting out S.O.S. on my horn. Surely someone would notice.
Then I began to wonder whether today's Internet savvy kids even recognize Morse Code. Would they think I was some crank just amusing myself? S.O.S.? What's that?
When the sun came up fully, I started throwing fresh pine boughs and rotten wood on the fire, to create as much smoke as possible. I was pretty certain that the authorities would be looking for me by now. And I surveyed the position of my truck and decided it would be suicidal to drive off this mountain.
I still was feeling weak and still nauseous with no hunger. Good things, because my emergency cans of chili had disappeared from my camping box. (Probably got hungry one night at home and fixed myself a pot, only to forget to replace it.)
So I finished off my 12 pack and thanked God for the Irish and their devotion to good beverage. I longed for a shot or three of Jameson, but that was futile. Actually I was longing for a lot of things. Finally I collapsed in my bag and had a solid night's sleep. The next morning, I was damn certain, help would arrive.
The next morning, help never arrived, even though I'd repeated the signaling with the truck lights and the bonfire. I listened intently to KOA radio, hoping to hear that a search had been launched. Turns out, it had been, but KOA never reported it. Had they done so, I would have stayed put.
By noon, I was convinced that no human had ever encountered the terrain where I was stuck. If I wanted to survive this ordeal, I'd have to save myself. And that, I feared, could prove fatal. By now I was hungry and wondering what kind of greul I could brew up with some fresh pine needles). Just driving up this mountain had damn near killed me. Driving down in a weakened state? Through deep snow with no road underneath? Unthinkable, yet I had to do it.
I knew from my trip odometer that I was 14.3 miles into the woods from the highway. That was too far to tackle on foot and almost surely I'd get lost trying to do it. At least with my truck, I had a survival system in case I got stuck again.
So I found a ballpoint pen and began writing a note to Becky, explaining why I might not be around for our 35th anniversary later this year. In a very perfect metaphor for the whole damn trip, the pen ran out of ink after two sentences.
Further discouraged, I screwed up my courage and headed down the mountain. The first mile took more than an hour. After a couple miles, I was certain I would make it, and finally I did.
If there's a moral to this story, I suppose it is this: Beware of hot links sandwiches anywhere in the West.
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