Saturday I logged in for a nice relaxing day of AH without the wife and kid to distract me. Wouldnt you know it my friend and squad CO WMlute is online.....Lute is mourning the loss of his most favorite posession in the world his MS sidewinder precision pro stick. It seems that after years of stick-stiring and HOing it finally crapped out on him.
We get to talking about it and it dawns on me that I had just looked at 2 or 3 of them new in box at our local Wal-mart yesterday. I know that they pulled them off the market over a year ago but, our local wallyworld in podunkville florida seems to have a few.
Well, Lute flips out and asks me to head down there and buy it for him and he'd pay me back. No problem...... i jump in my trusty 13 year old mustang that i have had for 10 years and have spent countless thousands of dollars on modifing and generally making insanely fast and according to my wife "too loud to sit in for more than 5 minutes"
I get to the store ran(not walked) to the electronics deparment, scooped up the last joystick and headed for the checkout.... The cashier rings it up total comes to $19.99. (1st clue....the price sticker i saw underneath it was for $39.99) I figured that since it was dicontinued that i was getting a great deal yay!!!
I'm driving back home and sitting in traffic you would think at 10am on a saturday people have better things to do than sit in traffic. Anyhow, I start to smell something burning....I naturally assume that the sanford and son 79 chevy pickup next to me is on its last legs and something is burning under the hood and causally ignore it.(2nd clue if you smell it burning in your car odds are its YOUR car).
So off i go down the road.......then awwww crap i start to see SMOKE coming from underneath my hood!!!!
I'm 2 blocks from my house and on a really busy road with no shoulder to pull of on, so i figure i'll try to get home(3rd clue and bad idea).
As i hit the main road into our subdevelopment i see FLAMES!!!!! friggin FLAMES coming out from the cowling on the hood....PANIC MODE kicks in i scream into my driveway about 10 ft. from the house and go to grab the gardenhose....and.......my wife moved it to the backyard. so here i am in my front yard with a silly look on my face walmart bag in hand looking for a gardenhose. I grab a 5 gallon bucket of reverse osmosis water i have for my reef tank that was conveniently sitting in the garage and douse the now melting flaming plastic that used to be my distributor cap and wires.....FIRE OUT....I'm pissed.....
So head into the house cause at this point i need a friggin beer or something to calm my frazzled nerves....I, on a whim open the joystick box to see what the big deal is about this stick is. I pull it from the carton and discover.......its the WRONG DAMN STICK!!! it's the MS presision pro and not a sidewinder(ie not a twisty stick).
Now i am the proud owner of a MS flight stick and a slightly crispy mustang.....The things ya do for a squaddie
