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Tom's Pancakes and the Pond of Fire Sale

Here's the story...we were at the Nantahala Outdoor Center's Spring Flea Market calmly trying to sell a couple of Crossfires, a Torrent, a pair of Tevas, and a Werner paddle when it happened.

Scott and I were sitting on the tailgate of his truck, which we had parked by the railroad tracks, and we were chatting up a pair of nice ladies who were interested in a yellow Crossfire we had laid out. Tom was cooking pancakes around at the front of the truck, where he couldn't be seen by us. Suddenly I heard him yell "SHIT!", and he came sprinting around the truck as fast as his feet would carry him.

Then he saw that we were in the process of making a sale, and he tried to act nonchalant. Nope...nothing unusal here that might queer a deal. But my curiosity was piqued. What could it be? Bears in the pancake syrup? The BeeGees? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Scott said "Crossfires are really stable boats. You won't get bored with it...you can take it creeking or on big water and it'll do just great." While one of the ladies asked Scott another question, Tom wiggled his eyebrows towards me and then towards the front of the truck. Scott continued his calm sales patter, and I moseyed around to the front of the truck, took a look, and quickly moseyed back. Lordamercy, I thought...did I really see that?

Tom had been cooking pancakes over an MSR WhisperLite stove connected to a quart-sized fuel bottle, and the whole thing had somehow caught fire. Not your normal friendly blue gas flame in neat circles around the single burner, but a great greasy ball of yellow fire engulfing both the stove and the fuel bottle. The fire was slowly melting and burning the plastic stopper valve out of the fuel bottle. The pancake mix box was smoldering and the plastic syrup bottle had relaxed stickily in the heat.

"How much fuel is in that bottle?" I asked Tom cooly. "It's completely full," he replied, and as he spoke he smiled at one of the ladies. "That's a nice boat," he observed. "I learned how to paddle in a Crossfire. One time I hit a perfect pirouette at Hellhole right in front of Team Dagger...", he began, but as he went on with his story I was thinking quarts of fuel and BOOM-BOOM, and I had trouble concentrating.

Scott let Tom take over the sales pitch, and he went around front to investigate the trouble for himself. He came back shortly wearing only one sandal. While Tom was explaining to the ladies how one of the Team Dagger members had used his Crossfire to hit fifteen linked cartwheels, I asked Scott how it was. "Well," he stage-whispered, "I tried to stomp it out and I caught one of my Birkenstocks on fire. Then I tried pouring the pancake mix on the valve to smother it, but the sugar in the mix caught fire and now the grass is burning. The valve is mostly melted, and at any minute the fire's going to burn into the bottle."

Now I used to be a fireman, and I know full well what happens when heat, oxygen, and fuel get together inside a confined space. We in the fire prevention business used to call that an explosion. When the explosion took place in an aluminum cylinder, we called that a pipe bomb. And those little razors of metal getting flung all around? We called that shrapnel.

"Tom, why don't you check on the pancakes?" I said. Tom swallowed and left. One of the ladies asked "Does breakfast come with the boat?" "Yes Ma'am," Scott replied cheerfully. "If you buy that Crossfire, Tom will cook you all the pancakes you want. We've even got blueberry syrup and real butter." White lies don't count, I reminded myself.

Tom returned in a very calm panic. I turned my back to the ladies and listened to him. "I tried to pick the stove up and throw it away from the front of the truck, but it scorched my fingers and I screwed up the toss. It rolled under the truck." "This truck?" I asked. "It's under the engine block," he answered. "I tried to reach it but I couldn't."

I shook my head. Exploding gas tanks. Scott said "You know, that boat is still under warranty. Dagger boats have three year pro-rated warranties against any kind of hull damage." The ladies smiled. Right, I thought. How are you going to convince Dagger that this melted and charred turd of plastic used to be a Crossfire?

Well...I thought...time to put some of that rookie school training to the test. Tom and I left our prospective customers in Scott's capable hands and returned to the scene of the trouble. I grabbed a long stick from the grass and used one end to fish the stove from under the truck. A pinhole opened in the fuel line, and the leak spewed fire for about a foot. Tom and I looked at each other and shrugged. I used the stick like a one-wood to drive the stove as far away as I could...about three feet. Some of the plastic on the stopper valve was bubbling crazily, and the whole thing had melted into a strange twisted J.

The pinhole in the fuel line opened even wider, and Tom and I went back to the tailgate to escape the jet of flame. "Will you take a check?" one of the ladies asked? "I don't know..." Scott began skeptically.

Just then, we heard a WHOOSH and all three of us turned in time to see a basketball-sized ball of flame hurtle through the air away from the truck and over the railroad tracks by which we had parked. Scott quickly said "Yes...yes...a check will be just fine," and by some miracle the women acted as if they'd missed the biblical pillar of fire leading away from the sale. Then a very scared-looking fellow in dreadlocks joined our party, and Scott, Tom, and I simultaneously shot him evil looks before he could so much as open his mouth.

The ladies wrote Scott a check and picked the boat up. "We'll pass on the pancakes," one of them said. "Enjoy the boat," Scott called after them, and as soon as they were out of earshot, Dreadlocks started babbling. "Yourstovewasonfire" he gushed, and then he collected himself. "I used one of your plates to scoop it up and I threw it in the pond. Then I stomped out the grass."

The pond? Scott, Tom, and I traded baffled looks. We walked to the front of the truck, climbed up and over the railroad tracks, and looked down into a scummed green pool of water. No stove to be seen...just a tranquil green pond with a light rainbow-sheen of stove fuel.

Although it was only nine in the morning, the first beers of the day were surprisingly smooth. Dreadlocks drank four bottles.
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