| In Memoriam of the Niehaus van... (?-2001) |
| This Page is dedicated to the Niehaus' family van which served as the Crazies' main form of transportation for the 2000-2001 and half of the 2001-2002 season until it was destroyed piece by piece. I believe the first thing to be destroyed was the horn, which was sacrificed for the sake of science. We decided to experiment whether or not we could continuously honk the horn until we got to Moro from right outside of Bethalto... bad idea. About five miles down the road we heard a high pitched grunt followed by silence, and the horn decided to stop working entirely. Then, a few months later after a game in the Holiday Tournament the Crazies decided that we would take the scenic route back to Gillespie. This involved driving on the roads near the mine, and of course, in typical bad luck fashion, we heard an amazing pop followed by some interesting noises. We decided it might be best to pull over and on inspection we noticed the right front tire looked somewhat like a deflated balloon. And of course, none of the Crazies had ever actually changed a tire. Hubie, being the good Boy Scout he was, decided he would take a stab at it while Ross and the rest of us decided to make fun of his attempt. After a bit Hubie and Ross noticed that the lugnuts were frozen on somehow. We called in reinforcements in the form of Roger Niehaus while we pitifully tried to change the cursed thing. The classic thing about the whole situation was that Hubie complained the entire time that, "I think I have frostbite... that metal is really cold," while of course the rest of us made fun of him for being such a wuss. So anyway, Roger shows up about an hour later and with the aid of his hammer accomplishes in 5 minutes what we were trying to for about 2 hours. Thanks Roger, for hurting our manhoods but mostly for getting us out of that mess! The next and probably most shocking accident that happened during our time in the van happened as were coming back from a small excursion out near Lake Catatoga. The Crazies decided to hang some signs on a few aquaintances' houses out by the lake. And so, as we were finishing up we realized that we had close to ten minutes to get to Carlinville for a Holiday Tournament game. Sooooo speeding along at a much faster speed than is usually considered safe, we crossed one of those extremely old wooden bridges along the way. Shortly after passing it, we got to a road flooded by the Macoupin Creek for at least thirty feet down the road. After wading into it a little bit Ross decided that the van would never make it across, so we realized this would make us even later... and we went faster back the way we had come. The bridge that we had crossed earlier was perfect going toward Carlinville but if you traveled back in the opposite direction (like we were just about to) there was a huge dip in the road right before the bridge. Anyway, we came up on the bridge and slowed down some but probably should have slowed down a little more because we hit the dip with an amazing thud followed by what we thought was the sound of gravel hitting the rear windshield. You will just have to wait to see what happens next.... |
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