Be Careful What You Wish For

When I was growing up as a young EMT and paramedic, we learned to call them Cars or Units. The younger crowd has been influenced by the cool EMS cultures of New York and Oakland and call them Buses. Just about anywhere you go, EMS folks call them Rigs and the general public, of course, calls them Ambulances.

In the South, however, they are Trucks. Never mind the fact they look much more like vans than they do trucks. In defference to all, we will put them all together. They will heretofore (at least for this post) be called CUBRATs. It's pronouciation is versatile: could be cub-rat or Q-brat, you choose.

The CUBRAT I drove back to Atlanta to tuck in for a long winter nap had a shimmy. This particular shimmy was at its worst when driving exactly 72 miles per hour. It wasn't there so much when you accelerated, but when you reached cruising speed and settled in, this thing shook like one of those big, coin-operated recliners at the mall where husbands sit while their wives shop.

Our team drove 72 miles per hour all the way to Atlanta.

In a bit of Yankee ingenuity -- copied directly by observing a cohort -- I pressed a garbage can into service as an impromptu ice chest for the 9 hour drive to Atlanta from Alexandria. Filled with ice, water bottles and little cans of espresso shots, this great idea lasted all the way through Louisiana. By Mississippi, the ice had melted and my little ambulance's shimmy was splashing water all over my arm.

So much for my McGuyver skills.

By ten o'clock in the morning the temperature was 85 degrees and the humidity just as high. It was time for some air conditioning. Unfortunately, air conditioning was an upgrade on this particular trip and I was not traveling first class. Hot air, though, was free.

So I pulled into Atlanta with the windows down, soaking wet with very loose overly-massaged muscles. Almost immediately, we were shuttled off to the airport for our flight to Houston through Miami, where the flight crew is MIA, which is becoming a theme. Here I sit in Miami airport, stinky, tired and waiting for a flight crew to take me to Houston, where I'll pick up another CUBRAT and get back to work.

Be careful what you wish for.

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