Your Funniest, Best, or Worst Experiences While Broke Down

In 1994 I was delivering some material on 17 mile road in Carmel, CA. When I left the job I had to drive out through the golf course to get out of there. Right across the street from the clubhouse at Spyglass I lost a radiator hose and called a mechanic to come out and fix it.
I went into the Pro Shop to tell the guy what was going on and we got to talking and after about 10 or 15 minutes he said..."I've never seen inside one of those trucks, Do you mind if I take a look?" I told him to go for it!
When he came back he said "Hey I noticed that you have a nice set of clubs in there, You wanna play a round while you're waiting?"

I do not play golf! (It's a long story about the clubs) But it was "Spyglass" and my father in law had been trying to get a T time there for a long time so I said "Sure" I told him that I really didn't play and he just laughed and set me up with a cart and a whole bucket of golf balls and said "Enjoy your game."

Did I tell you I don't really play golf?

I have never seen so many golf balls go in an entirely different direction than I intended them to when I hit them! But I had a whole bucket of them so I didn't really care.
Lucky for the course it was a "light" morning so there weren't very many people there to see some big ol' bearded trucker hitting golf balls into oblivion and abusing a golf cart!
I had a great time! I lost all but 4 or 5 of the bucket of golf balls and I finished up just in time for the mechanic to be closing the hood on my truck.

I still don't play golf...I never will, But I will NEVER forget the look on my father in laws face when I told him that "I played Spyglass for free!"

 

It wasn't the breakdown so much as what went along with it. I was working for Phillips 66 hauling mercaptan across the US and Canada; and we had some of the first Super 10's. An awesome tranny as far as 10 speeds go, they were a joy to drive compared to a normal 10. But they also had a fatal weakness; they were prone to spit the pins out of the synchronizer because of the way the shift mechanism worked. They would do a range shift when the lever moved between the 2nd and 3rd gate. Not a problem in and of itself, but when you had drivers who had the bad habit of slipping into neutral at fairly high speed coming down ramps, it would range shift when the spring centered the stick. When it finally had enough, the tranny would hang, usually in high range. (Got the gabs today, don't I?)

So we are St Louis on the IL side when it happens and manage to limp to a dealer, and soon word comes down: no parts for at least 3 days. Off to the motel, we're flying home in the morning.

The cab that shows up is a beat up old Dodge minivan, with a driver who'd not missed many meals. Everyone else in the house probably went hungry, but not this guy, he was pushing 400 lbs. Probably more. Which would have been an issue if there hadn't something growing in one of those folds of skin. We are NOT talking industrial strength BO here, we're talking a smell that permeates your very being. It's 10 degrees out and we're cracking windows, hoping to survive the 30-40 minute ride to Lambert Field. By the time we hit the airport, the cabby asks, "Which airline?" and we're like, "Right here is good!"

So in the terminal we go, and realize we can still smell him, it's in our clothes! Off to the john to change, come out and realize we still smell that smell! It is actually in our noses! By now we're ready to snort Drano if it would take the odor away. Fortunately I had some Mentholatum in my shave kit (why didn't this occur to me earlier?!?) and that helped for a while but by the end of the flight we're again smelling the cabby. Another dose gets us to Amarillo, and a hot shower at the house seemed to finally flush the residue from our sinuses!

But in my mind? "Oh dear Lord, please take that memory away!"

oh, and bennies for me for getting in a Skynyrd reference!