Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Blowing Up a Car With Flaming Tampons...and Ultrarunning

From the Chambersburg (PA) Public Opinion, my local paper, a tale of a hapless couple:

A man and woman are charged with vandalizing a car and trying blow it up with flaming tampons outside a Metal Township bar.
Patricia Elyse Deshong, 25, of 8962 Pleasant Ridge Road, Harrisonville, and Quentin Adam Deshong, 22, of 196 N. Clear Ridge Road, Hustontown, are charged in the Jan. 7 incident, according to police charging documents.
 Troopers located the Deshongs outside the tavern and arrested them. According to the affidavit, they were intoxicated.
[Patricia Deshong] is also accused of threatening to kill Trooper Gregory Strayer while she was secured to a prisoner bench at the Chambersburg station.
 
 Suffice it to say that these people are not rocket scientists.  They tried to ignite tampons stuffed into the gas fill pipe and the oil fill pipe, but the car failed to catch fire, much less blow up.

Susceptibility to detonation is in inverse proportion to real life.  In other words, in the movies, cars seemingly spontaneously burst into flames, particularly when zooming off a cliff into space.  In the real world, flaming cars are fairly uncommon.

Except on trails. I can't count the number of times I've had to dodge blown up or still-flaming cars in the backcountry.  Probably even more common than roots or rocks. 

So whenever well-meaning people (non-runners) tell us we better be careful out there, Ultra folk, flaming cars are what they're probably talking about.

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