If You Come To A Bridge, You've Gone Too Far!

By Jan Sumner

This is a compilation of humorous, interesting and hard to believe tales from over thirty years of conducting insurance inspections on unsuspecting and unbelievable businesses. Whoever said, "You can't make this stuff up", had this adventure in mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jan Sumner
• Release date: Jul 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9780970319777

Jan Sumner

Jan has written ten books, two of which received special recognition. He was honored to present his book Legacy of a Monarch-An American Journey at the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, and his book Independence, Mantle and Miss Able was acknowledged by the Smithsonian in 2015 as part of their Home Town Team project and is also in the Baseball Hall of Fame.Jan also works with the homeless and teaches Sunday school.

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If You Come To A Bridge, You’ve Gone Too Far!

Author Jan Sumner

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Jan Sumner and JaDan Publishing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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IF YOU COME TO A BRIDGE, YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR

By Jan Sumner

Getting Started

To have tried and failed, is better than to have not tried and succeeded.

I don’t know who said that, but it sounded not only challenging, but essential to me. So in 1977, based on that assertion, I ventured forth to start my own company in the insurance inspection business.

I’d worked for several insurance inspection companies, so I decided to take a daring leap and go out on my own. I had no idea what the future held, but I knew I wanted it to be my destiny and not what someone else thought my future should be.

I’d made some good contacts while working for other companies and thought maybe, just maybe, they’d give me a chance once I was on my own.

Sure enough, a good friend gave me the opportunity I needed. That was over thirty years ago. It has been, to say the least, an interesting, educational, and entertaining journey. When someone says, You can’t make stuff like that up, this job is the personification of that statement.

In the beginning Business Information Services (which would later become

Colorado Inspection Service) was operated out of a small bedroom in our house. An insurance inspector’s job is to go out to any and all kinds of businesses’ looking for fire and/or liability hazards, checking things like wiring, plumbing, heating, and evidence of water leakage as well as liability hazards, such as overhead clearance, trip and slip hazards, etc., etc. The point being, an inspector must go to the building location and check for unsafe conditions. One of the significant challenges of the job many times was not only finding the building, but getting to the building, when, for instance, it sits on top of a mountain at a ski resort, or a goldmine back in the hills of Wyoming, or it was just out in the country somewhere with no street signs or numbers. Rural areas are renowned for this - endless roads and unmarked buildings.

Along the way, however, I came across the most interesting and eclectic group of people you can imagine. This was both the best and worst part of the job. In general people were nice and tried to be helpful. However, I soon learned that, when asking for directions or help, if the response was, I think or it’s probably, they, in fact, had no clue where it was. This was before Mapquest or GPS - so I was at the mercy of local maps and/or individuals in the area. Unfortunately, early in my career, I spent many hours and logged even more miles following the guesses and estimations of pseudo guides. This was just one of many lessons I learned over the years.

The equipment required for this job included a clip board (which could double as a weapon, as you’ll see later), a good pencil (so you could write outside in a blizzard), a small flash light (to see in dark, hidden basements of old buildings), a reliable camera, maps (lots of maps), a comfortable and dependable car, and endless patience, the most important characteristic of all. With these tools in place, I was ready to begin my journey, or at least I thought I was!

Since I was a one-man operation, this meant lots of travel around Colorado, Wyoming and some work in Utah, Montana, and New Mexico. Believe me, maps don’t come close to accurately depicting how big these states actually are. You can drive for an hour, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see one car, or as was the case many times in Wyoming, no cars, no people and only an occasional antelope. Sometimes I found this restful, but in the winter months it was downright frightening. Getting caught in a blizzard in the wilds of Wyoming or Montana could be deadly. Although ostensibly aware of this, I unfortunately learned it the hard way.

* * * *

Lesson #1

I’d taken off on one of my eastern half of Wyoming jaunts in January, which immediately tells you I’m not the sharpest tool in the drawer, but since the insurance companies require these inspections be completed within a one month time frame, no matter what time of year, I had no choice.

I was up near Lusk, Wyoming, which is located along the Wyoming - Nebraska border. I was heading home and hoping to get there that same day. I could see a storm moving in and desperately wanted to finish up and drive the 150 miles down to Cheyenne, then the 110 miles on into Denver. I remember talking to a man at the garage I’d inspected, You better get goin’, or they’ll close the highway on ya, he said. It had started snowing and in what seemed like a matter of minutes, the wind began to howl. Always alert to my surroundings, but slow to respond, I noticed the storm had quickly turned into a blizzard (blizzard by definition – horizontal snow). I jumped in my car and started down Highway 85 to Cheyenne. It’s a two-lane highway that runs along the eastern border of the state. The terrain is flat prairie land and the winds can be belligerent. This coupled with horizontal snow was turning the drive into an unworkable task. As I headed south out of Lusk, it just kept getting worse. I would learn later, that they did in fact close the road right after I left. Somewhere south of Lusk the pavement began to disappear. It quickly became a whiteout. I slowed down so I could see the poles on the side of the road, which was the only way I could determine if I was still on the highway.

Suddenly out of nowhere a pickup truck shot by me. The back draft created conditions similar to driving inside cotton. I was driving blind. I didn’t want to stop completely for fear of someone behind me would run up my tail pipe. I swerved and swayed my way into Cheyenne in what seemed like days. I’d left Lusk about 3 p.m. with 150 miles to go. I arrived in Cheyenne around 10 p.m. What should have taken a little over two hours had turned into seven, and felt longer. The weather conditions were despicable.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Hitching Post Motel to get a room. A tractor-trailer had rolled over on the interstate leading to Denver and the state patrol had closed the highway - there was no going home. I was exhausted. I figured I’d better get a room as quickly as possible, because I wasn’t the only one stranded. I pulled on the door handle of my car to get out - it didn’t budge. I kept tugging with no success. I could vaguely see through the blizzard conditions and fogged windows as other people pulled into the parking lot and ran into the motel.

It must have looked like a snake had gotten loose, or I was getting mugged, as I flopped around inside my car trying to get the door open. I had bench seats so I finally propped myself against the passenger door and kicked as hard as I could against the driver’s side door. The door finally flew open, tearing all the molding off the side of my car from the front fender all the way to the back bumper. What I hadn’t realized was that during my excursion through the Arctic tundra, my car had become encased in ice. The door was literally frozen shut. I did get a room and eventually made it home the next day, albeit with a damaged car and beleaguered psyche. It was a lesson I never forgot.

Snow Blind

Talk about blizzards with an attitude. I remember sitting in an insurance office soon after I’d gotten started and having an underwriter tell me about a truck driver who’d been battling a severe snowstorm one night.

Apparently, he was driving directly into the storm. The snow was hitting him head on so hard that at one point he actually thought his tractor had stopped. I remember thinking, Oh, come on. How in the world could he have possibly believed he wasn’t moving? Nevertheless, that’s exactly what he thought, so he opened his door and stepped out. Unfortunately, his tractor was still moving at about 35 mph. He was cut, bruised and banged up pretty badly, but he survived. At the time we laughed about it, but that was because it hadn’t happened to either one of us. Still it just seemed impossible to me. Several years went by and I had completely forgotten about it.

Late one night I found myself heading south out of Laramie, Wyoming in a very heavy snowstorm. The farther I got out of town, the darker it got. Plus