This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.
A Tunnel Too Far – photo by NY Times
Yes, this is exactly what you think it is, Inches Too Tall for Tunnel, Rig Plies It Anyway:
It was just six inches.
That was what made the difference at 4:40 a.m. yesterday as Gilberto Cantu, a truck driver from Texas, approached the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel in his big rig, loaded with bathtubs, toilets and plumbing fixtures. The truck was 13 feet 6 inches high. The tunnel has a height limit of 13 feet. Six inches can make a big difference.
Mr. Cantu drove the entire 1.5 miles of the tunnel from Weehawken, N.J., to Manhattan, tearing his way under the Hudson River in the tunnel’s center tube and peeling back the roof of his tractor-trailer as if it were a tin can. No one was injured, but an undetermined number of decorative tunnel ceiling tiles were ripped off.
Not much you can say about that.
I can say this: AWESOME. I wish the truck had been full of watermelons.
Think of what would have happened if the truck carried fish, or (dare I say it?) sardines.
That sort of headline writes itself.
Take a lid off a truck? You Cantu!!!
I’m assuming they fired him?
And as cool as watermelons would have been, imagine the horror if it had been full of chicken crates!
I have to admit, Jeff’s post is funny. What’s next? A jew in comedy? oy!