Soon after I graduated from college, I had packed all of my hopes and dreams, and pretty much everything that I owned at the time, into about 20 boxes(big, small, light, heavy), and headed up I-20 towards the Music City, Nashville Tennessee. The trip started out o.k., I had a pickup truck at the time and the boxes seemed to be staying in place, when all of a sudden, the box that was a little lighter, which had all of my cowboy boots(an absolute necessity in country music) in it, flew out of the back of the truck-bed. With three pairs of boots scattered along the highway, all I had to do now was get them up as quickly as possible.
I pulled off of the side of the road, and flagged my mother down who was following behind me in her car, I told her to pull over. About the time I had made sure that she had pulled over safely, I turned around and the bottom fell out. Of all the vehicles in the world, that could ride into my best pair of boots, what kind of vehicle do you think was coming??? You guessed it, a huge eighteen wheeler, that rode right over them. About this time, there was a car that had pulled over, I thought to help me in my emergency, and out stepped a man that was trying to get the boots for himself. I yelled to him that they were mine and he quickly left. Even though I thought they were goners, I quickly gathered all of the pairs of boots and put them in the front with me this time.
Well, this travel horror story, does have a happy ending. The boots that seemed un-repairable, found their fate at a shoe repair place, and the gentleman, was able to restore the boots, enough to where they were wearable, and showed only minor damage!