Jumping my Truck and almost killing my dog. (with a happy ending) From my journal

Below is another Journal entry I wrote a few years ago. I laugh every time i think about this incident. ENJOY!!!

At the South end of Corona at the base of the foothills was a street named Upper. It was in disrepair and ran right through orange groves. There was one piece of road that had sunk in the middle and buckled on the ends from flooding. The repair for this section of road did not include leveling the road back out. So the repair was simply replacing the cracked up asphalt with a slab of concrete. The result was a slight lift on each end and a saddle in the middle. In other words a launch and landing ramp on each side of a concrete saddle. A Jump. The angle of the jump was perfection. The angle of the landing was smooth. From launch to land was somewhere between 15 and 20 feet. The beauty was, if you hit the launch at 55 MPH, you would launch and land perfectly smooth. Any car could get into the air on this jump and be relatively safe especially on the car. There was no hard pounding on the vehicle, no bottoming out, no ruining the motor mounts. in essence you could jump your car not ruin it and not get in trouble with your parents.

It was always fun to take someone new to the Upper Jump and hit the jump without them being prepared for it.

When I was 18 I took my girlfriend Jen out for an ice cream cone at Thrifty Drug store. We each got a double scoop. I had my dog Cricket in the back of the 88 Blue Ford Ranger. So there we were a guy his girl and his dog in the pick up truck. It was a hot day and we had no plans of what to do next so without a word I headed toward Upper street. by the time we turned onto upper our ice cream was on the melt and we had to keep licking to keep the drips on the cone from getting to our hands. The jump was about a half mile ahead and i did not let Jen in on my plan. I looked over at her and she seemed content to be on a drive and eating ice cream. I sped up as quick as I could do it smoothly. I didn't want Jen knowing what I was planning. She never noticed that we were hitting 80 MPH on a small orange grove surrounded road with a launch ramp in front of us.

Right as we hit 80, we hit the jump and I looked over at Jen (not wearing a seatbelt) and watched as the car leaped in the air. As we bacame airborne, everything in my brain slowed down and I was keenly aware of everything going on around me.

Jen was lifting up off of her seat and the back of her head hit the roof of the truck causing her lips and nose to smoosh into her now melty soft ice cream cone. While she was headed up, it dawned on me that Cricket was in the back of the truck. I looked in the rearview mirror to see cricket about 2 feet higher than the top of the truck bed and lofting in an angle that was taking her out of the bed of the truck over the passenger side. Tail and legs all sprawled out like a cat that you just tossed in the air.

At 80 MPH the landing was not smooth because your car would fly past the landing slope and onto the flat road below causing violent bouncing and bottoming out. The Car hit gournd and bounced all over, Jen bounced back into her seat with ice cream all over her face and burst out laughing and Cricket hit the road and rolled end over end side over side.

Jen was laughing so hard that i did giggle, but I stopped the car and jumped out saying that Cricket might be dead. I was sure i would have to bury her in the orange groves and not say anything to my family so that mom and dad wouldn't know that I had jumped the truck and killed the dog in one move. by the time i was out and looking for Cricket, she was gone. I could not see her we searched the orange groves for a few minutes with no luck and decided to head home.

I was torn between laughing at Jen's ice cream face and crying over the dog i had just killed. We got home and went in the house. Jen cleaned up and we sat down and decided to just sit at home and watch some TV. I vaguely remember watching an old black and white Samurai movie about a blind Samurai in Japanese with sub titles.

After the Movie was over we went out to the truck so I could take Jen home. On the front lawn in the shade of our front yard tree was Cricket. Just resting there in the shade on a warm day. She jumped up and came up to us as happy and healthy and fit as ever with the exception of a small rasberry scrape on her nose.

Jen and I got in the Truck and Cricket jumped in the bed and there we were, a guy his girl and his dog in the pick up like nothing had ever happened.

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