Life on a Cross Bike

Stella Awards

It’s time again for the annual “Stella Awards”! For those unfamiliar with
these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled
hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s in New Mexico
where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the
coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving.

Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right?

That’s right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and
verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch

your head. So keep your head scratcher handy.

Here are the Stella’s for the past year:

7TH PLACE:
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of
her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running
inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised
by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6TH PLACE:
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical
expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman
apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when
he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.
Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.

5TH PLACE:
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the
automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the
garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door
connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it
shut. Forced to sit for eight, count ‘em, EIGHT, days on a case of Pepsi
and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance
company claiming undue mental Anguish.

Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000
for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching. There are more…

4TH PLACE:
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock , Arkansas , garnered 4th Place in the
Stella’s when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being
bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the
beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. Williams did not get as
much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been
provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over
the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun

Grrrrr … Scratch, scratch.

3RD PLACE:
Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered
a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink
and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor:
Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Hang in there; there are only two more Stella’s to go..

2ND PLACE:
Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a
nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor,
knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to
sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover
charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000….
oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.

1ST PLACE:
(May I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please)

This year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski,
of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home.
On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway,
she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back
of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set.
The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Is it Obama, Hillary, Tom, Rudy, Mit or one of the other cast of thousands… Watched any of the debates this year? God knows that its hard enough figuring out which bonehead politician actually has a stance on any of the issues or if they agree with you… So try this out. It is kinda neat, not a joke. Answer a list of questions that have had the answers from all the candidates recorded, then your answers are tabulated and the candidate with the statements most like yours is identified with all the others in lower priority.

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

Ok, so I’m a Maineiac… Born here, live here, prolly never gonna leave here, absolutely gonna die here. But I think i have finally found one reason NOT to live in Maine… Not the 100 feet of snow we get between November and May, not the freezing cold that starts just after Labor Day and lasts till sometime in June; not even the seemingly endless supply of “snowbirds” that get in the way and try to pick you off when on that favorite ride… Nope… none of those…

The only reason I can see that I don’t want to live in Maine… Cyclocross season… or at least the middle of it. That little part of the schedule when the racing moves 3 hours or so away from me. I am sooooo jonesing for a race. Although I have sucked it up again this season, I am really missing being at the races. Looks like the next time for me is Lowell! One of my favorites, then the MRC race and I think that might be it my last… this will be my first year to actually make it to the race and I promise i will bring some beer, GD, i owe you one for Gloucester…

So, the only good thing is that I have seemed to have come out of not racing, is that i’ve gotten myself on the bike a few days a week… Training, what a concept. I must say though, it is nice to actually get on a bike and ride just to ride, not to rip my guts out. Todd was up in Maine a couple of weeks ago, and we got in a 2 hour ride with some friends. Just riding… How nice! The punch line is after spending every weekend for two months riding less then 50 minutes at a time, 2 hours on a bike was a killer on the gluteus maximus.

But I digress… there it is… my crab of the week… Look forward to seeing everyone at Lowell. Been great reading everyones results and blogs since Gloucester!

Look to next weeks topic when i will share: The good, the bad and the ugly: Looking down the barrel of my 11th Christmas season working in Retail!!! Just remember, only 49 shopping days till Christmas…

so why do I blog? Not really sure, just seemed like a good a place as any to blow off steam