The following story is true and it will have more meaning to those of you who have ever been involved with coaching alpine skiing. My team was competing at Big Rock in Mars Hill, Maine and the skiers had arrived at the lodge and were preparing for the day’s event when one of them(I’ll call him Rick) comes up to me and says, “Coach, I don’t think I can race today.”
“What’s wrong,” I asked. “Are you sick?”
“No, I forgot my gloves.”
“Uh, Rick, I don’t think that’s a problem. Here, I have an extra pair.”

Ten minutes later, another skier comes to me, “Coach, guess who forgot his boots?”
I took a quick look around the group and there stood Rick with the dumbest look on his face.
I ventured a guess, “Rick?’
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“I’m telepathic.”

To Rick’s credit, he quickly came up with a solution. Don’t forget, he felt he couldn’t race because he forgot his gloves but not racing wasn’t a consideration without boots! He sprinted to the rental shop and rented a pair for the day.

By the time he was geared up, the rest of the team was on the slopes with the alpine coach inspecting the course. Rick put on his skis and headed for the lift. Minutes later, he comes running through the front door where I was standing, “I forgot my bib.” Racers have to wear a racing bib when inspecting the course. He went upstairs, put on his bib, came running back down, slipped on the cement floor and landed in a heap at my feet. He scrambled to his feet and headed out the door. “Have a nice day.” I called.

Sometime later I was relating Rick’s tough start to the day to a colleague and he said, “Do you suppose he had his bindings adjusted to the new boots? If they’re too loose, he could come out of them while skiing.”

As it happened, we didn’t have to worry about that because, you see, one ski fell off as he was riding up the lift and Rick, being the quick thinker that he is, jumped out of the chair to retrieve it.

A day later, we are on our way home. It’s seven hours from Mars Hill to Bethel. The skiers traveled on a school bus and I followed, driving a van full of ski equipment. We stopped at Burger King in Houlton and out comes Rick with the largest container of soda I’d ever seen.
“Rick, you thirsty?”

Two hours later, we’re just south of Bangor on I-95 when the bus makes an emergency stop. I have no idea why. I’m just starting to think that someone is sick when Rick jumps from the doorway of the bus, over the snowbank, and lands in the ditch in plowed and drifted snow up to his crotch. I get on the radio to the bus driver, “Hey, Gary, what the hell is he doing?”

“Did you see the soda that he bought at Burger King?”

There was probably 2 inches of crusted snow on top and Rick was not only in a ditch but at the base of a ledge that ran about 10 feet straight up and 20 feet in either direction parallel to the highway. Traffic is roaring by so fast that the van and bus are rocking. Rick’s best option would have been to wet his pants, since they were getting wet anyway, and get back on the bus. He tried making his way along the base of the ledge by walking on the crust but being in excess of 200 pounds, he didn’t have a chance. He’d work one foot out, place it on top and try to step up, only to break through and return to where he started. He kept this up for what seemed like forever. I’m laughing so hard the tears are running.
He finally gets up on top of the ledge and behind a bush where I think he breaks Tom Hank’s record he set in a locker room scene in “A League of Their Own.” If I’d only had a stop watch.

You’d think that would be the end of the story. Guess what he did next? Yep, he jumped.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had covertly funded a project with the U.S. Auto makers for the past 5 years, whereby the auto makers were installing black box voice recorders in four-wheel drive pickup trucks and SUV’s in an effort to determine in fatal accidents the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the crash.

They were surprised to find in 42 of the 50 states the recorded words of drivers in 61.2 percent of fatal crashes were, “Oh Shit”.

Only the upper section of Maine, specifically Caribou, Presque Isle, Fort Kent, Madawaska, Houlton, Mars Hill, Van Buren, Clayton Lake, and the entire northwestern area including Rangeley Greenville, and Eustis were different, where 89.3 percent of the final words were:

“Hold my beer, I’m gonna try something”

It’s no secret that Otis can bore the pants off just about anybody with his senseless drivel and quips on trivia that has as much importance as Virgil’s horse Clarence’s pimple on his right butt cheek!

While Gabby is all too often subject to Otis orations of babble, he is perhaps the only human being alive today who can withstand the torture. Here’s some bits of infinite wisdom Otis tormented Gabby with the other day.

More people are killed annually by donkeys than airplane crashes.

Please don’t ask me if this crap is true. How am I supposed to know or better yet, why would I care?

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

What’s up doc?

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver and purple.

What? You mean smurple isn’t a word?

To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs – it will let you go instantly.

Tell that to my second cousin who while vacationing in Florida got attacked by an alligator. He remembered to use either fingers or thumbs to poke out the eyeballs, except he hadn’t planned on the alligator biting off both hands. He couldn’t get his legs into position to use his toes.

A pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

And you know damn well I ain’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole.

The citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; ’7′ was selected after the original 7-ounce containers and ‘UP’ for the direction of the bubbles.

Amazing! Just completely amazing. I guess that explains why the drink tastes like crap.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

There has to be a way to modify this so that we can line up a bunch of politicians and watch them “digest themselves”. One of the problems with that is if they had to eat themselves first, they probably couldn’t stand the taste.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

About 7 seconds for me when the CBS Evening News comes on.

Every time you lick a stamp, you consume 1/10 of a calorie.

I now know why every postmaster I even knew is fat.

If we are all lucky, Otis will take another 10 or 20 years to amass such knowledge.

Not really sure which one would actually be in charge if and when Hillary Clinton wins the White House back, Otis and Gabby thought the safest bet would be to use this picture on their campaign posters.