Back in 1991, during the Summer between my Junior and Senior years of college, I worked as a security guard on a mobile patrol, 7 days a week, 11 hours and 45 minutes a night. I was given a tiny, new, blue Nissan pickup truck to drive around between the 14 properties I was in charge of protecting. I drove about 140 to 160 miles a night. I was tired all the time. I stayed up over 56 hours once.
One of the properties I had was called World Park. It was a complex of large warehouses built on drained swamp land, surrounded by swamps. I liked it because there was lots of large bullfrogs and red fox that would catch them and June bugs, under the lights, that I could watch from the truck from 20' away. It rained there almost every night, even when it didn't rain anywhere else nearby.
One stretch of warehouses had a parking lot with a drop down of about 6', between 2 different levels. Out from the buildings, the drop down was mild. Close to the buildings, the drop down was very steep and ramp like. I decided to see what would happen if I took the ramp like part at full speed.
I first slowly drove up the ramp part to make sure I would not bottom out. I then backed up to the curb at the far end of the parking lot, to give myself as much distance to build up speed as possible. I floored the gas and hit the ramp at around 75 miles per hour. The truck went completely airborne. While in the air, I got scared and floored the brakes. When the truck landed, it bounced and made repeated short, black tire markings and a lot of terrible sounds. The truck stopped just before hitting the curb at the far end of the lot. I got lucky and did not break anything on the truck.
Keith
