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2000 Personal Accounts
The Darwin Awards salutes the spirit portrayed in the following personal accounts, submitted by loyal (and sometimes reluctant) readers. Next Prev Random

 

Tourist Trap  
2000 Personal Account

How I Nearly Became Part of History

I've been fascinated by the Roman Empire since I was a wee lad. So on a business trip to France in December 1997, I took time off to visit some ruins in Orange -- an amphitheater and triumphal arch constructed in the first century AD That night, as I dined in Avignon, I read my tourist's guide and discovered that the famous aqueduct at Pont de Garde was only twenty kilometers away!

It was a clear and windy night with a full moon. Either under its influence, or that of a half-bottle of Chateauneuf de Pape, I decided that I would just drive out there and see what could be seen.

When I arrived at 9:30pm the parking lot and tourist facilities were deserted, and the road to the aqueduct was chained off. I could see clearly by the full moon, so I walked up for a closer look. As walked towards this marvel of ancient engineering, gazing at it in what a charitable friend later said was "childlike wonder" but others characterized as "an idiotic daze," the solid stone road fell out from under me. What I had taken to be a shadow in the road was in fact a meter-wide gap between the modern bridge and the aqueduct.

I skinned my shin, banged my back on the ledge, and plummeted two meters to land on my feet in the bottom of a trench. Overhead to my right, I saw the narrow stone bridge where pedestrians are supposed to walk.

I painfully climbed out of the trench, then jumped right back in to retrieve my rental car key and climbed out again. X-rays later showed that I had cracked a rib, but I got off lightly. The trench could easily have been ten or fifty meters deep, in which case I would have been pruned from further contributions to the gene pool.

I hope my daughter is more levelheaded!

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