It'll be a miracle if I live through this summer.

Regular readers of this column (both of you) may remember I was hit by a car a while back while riding my bicycle to pick up the mail.  I survived that with a broken toe, some minor contusions, and a nearly fatal case of wounded ego.

In another fate-tempter this summer, I took my life in my hands and rode my youngest son's quad, a small vehicle that goes from zero to warp 6 in about three seconds.  I actually jumped the thing over a ramped-up hill, designed by the kid for just such a purpose, before bringing it slowly down below the speed of sound, parking it, and shakily crawling off to kiss the ground and thank my maker.

The boy rides it all the time.  I'm hoping for grandchildren from him someday, but at this rate the odds don't look good.

Anyway, in the past couple months I've also nearly electrocuted myself while attempting to fix the front porch light, driven off the road and into a corn field during a foggy, 3 a.m. ride home from work, and capsized my row boat while trying to retrieve a dropped fishing rod.

It's been a busy summer, even for me.

But last Saturday night ... well ... all I can say is either the gods are trying to kill me and failing miserably, or my guardian angel is working overtime.  Given my history, I'd say the former is more likely, but I'm willing to entertain other, more benign, theories.

I was playing a gig with my little, weekend band, The Guinness Brothers, at Keenan Marina in Ferrysburg.  The folks there are great, and the marina owner hosts a big party every year with awesome food, rum-based drinks, music and dancing.  It's a fun event for all the "boat people," as well as for those of us in the band.  Even the caterer has a good time.

Most of party guests have boats parked in the marina, some of them of the ostentatious, "eat this, Donald Trump!" variety.  But despite the fact they have too much money, they seem to be for the most part friendly, down-to-earth folks who know how to enjoy and appreciate the things life has given them.  I enjoy their company immensely and wish I had enough cash of my own to hang with them more often.

The band had just about made it to the end of our second set, around 10 p.m., when the Ferrysburg Police arrived on the scene.  Apparently, an elderly lady living on the other side of the lake was having a hard time hearing the dialogue of a "Matlock" rerun over the noise of the party and had phoned in a complaint.  The Ferrysburg Police take this sort of heinous crime very seriously.  They ordered the marina management to shut things down for the night.

Now ordinarily, management obtains a noise permit, or whatever it is that keeps the cops off your back at a time like this, but this year they neglected to do so.  So that was pretty much it for the party.

The guests were surprisingly vocal in registering their opinions of the Ferrysburg Police - who were, after all, only doing what they're paid to do, and at any rate seemed far too young to have ever served in the SS during WWII - but these are wealthy boat owners, not dirty, filthy hippies, so there were no rubber bullets fired or tear gas canisters lobbed.

 As part of the hired help, I was perfectly content with the prospect of calling it a night, packing up, and getting home before 4 a.m. for a change.  Still, it was only 10 p.m., so when I was invited to grab a quick drink at the outdoor "tiki lounge" on the other side of the marina's parking lot, I figured what the heck.  There were a couple musicians over there with acoustic guitars playing Jimmy Buffet music; it sounded like fun.

My band-mates and I finished packing up the trailer, did one last "idiot check" of the stage area to make sure we hadn't left anything behind, then headed across the lot.

About halfway there, I decided I'd better leave my wallet, iPod and cell phone locked in my truck.  I was wearing the black suit I usually wear to gigs and all that stuff jammed into the pockets makes me look like a Bolivian drug mule trying to sneak past immigration.

The guys went on ahead of me.

After locking up the truck, I headed back across the pitch-black parking lot and toward the inviting amber glow of the tiki bar.

Now, I don't know why there are not more (or any) lights in this parking lot, but there aren't.  Not a one.  It's a murky expanse of asphalt the size of a football field and once the sun sets, the darkness becomes absolute, especially on a moonless night, as this one was.

Starlight glimmered faintly off the orderly rows of BMW, Mercedes and Lexus sedans parked there, giving me just enough light to see by, barely.  In my lightless surroundings, the stars shined brightly overhead.  Gazing up, I could make out the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the elliptical curve of the Milky Way.

The gentle breeze blowing in off the lake felt fine.  The heels of my best cowboy boots tapped out their rhythmic tattoo as I strolled across the macadam. God was in his Heaven and all was right with the world.

You'd think by now I would know a "gotcha" moment when I was walking into one, but apparently not.

I put my left foot down.  Click.  I put my right foot down.  Click.  I put my left foot down.  Nothing.  No click.  No tap.  No ground.

There are people familiar with the setup of a marina, I'm sure, but I'm not one of them.  Or rather, I wasn't before now.

Every marina has a slip cut into it, one designed to take the "eat this Donald Trump" boats out of the water at the end of the season.  It's a BIG slip, to accommodate the BIG boats.  Vertical steel walls reaching 10 or 15 feet out of the lake, as long as the biggest boat and as wide.  And for some reason, completely unmarked, unlighted and unattended.

I dropped like a stone into this one.

If time had permitted, I'm sure I would have panicked, cried like a baby, made deals with God and the devil, and seen my life pass before my eyes.  But before I could do any of that, I was inhaling copious portions of Lake Michigan and trying to figure out which way "up" was.

Due in no small part to my striking resemblance to a manatee, I'm an excellent swimmer, even while wearing a black suit and cowboy boots.  My only light was a small rectangle of stars directly overhead, but it didn't take me long to figure out what had happened and where I was.

I managed to swim out into the marina, where I was spotted by a group of party guests on their way to the tiki bar.  Suddenly, the water was alive with flashlight beams and the voices of people instructing me to not panic.

For some reason (probably the same reason the damn thing isn't lighted!) there are no ladders leading from the water to the top of the slip.  The nearest one, I was told, was about a half-mile down the marina.  Between my current position and there, nothing but sheer, steel walls.

One of the more clear-thinking guests suggested I swim out to her boat, which was moored only 20 or 30 yards from shore.  I got there no problem and she pulled me aboard, gave me a towel and even let me borrow one of her husband's shirts (a very nice silk Hawaiian job with a floral print).

She also offered me dry pants, but I just cannot bring myself to wear another man's trousers.  So, with soaked slacks and cowboy boots containing about two gallons of water each - but sporting a dry shirt - I made my way to the tiki bar, shared a drink and a few good-natured jibes over my choice of swimming attire, then headed on home.

I did remember to return the shirt first.

In the morning, I related the story of my adventure to The Lovely Mrs. Taylor.

"Why does this sort of thing always seem to happen to you?" she asked.

That's easy.  It's not because I'm careless, or because I'm a klutz (as Mrs. T suggested, rather cruelly, I thought).  It's because the gods are out to get me.

Do you have a comment, question or black suit and cowboy boots (size 11) you'd like to donate to Mike Taylor? Send it to: mtaylor@midmich.net, or via snail mail to Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.  Want more? Archived "Reality Check" columns may be found online at http://mtrealitycheck.typepad.com/

The single best thing about writing this column is this; hearing from readers, especially those with stories of their own to tell.  The worst things about reader mail is this; a lot times, readers' stories are better than mine are.  That's hard on the ego, folks.

I'm thinking right now of Jim H. of Kentwood, who wrote in regard to a column entitled "Of Boxcars and Summer Vacations."  That column was pure reminiscence, detailing my pre-teen adventures in "train-hopping."

Jim (whose last name I'm not using because he confessed to a Class B felony in his letter and I don't want him arrested at this late date) not only hopped trains in my old neighborhood, but actually derailed one.

This was in the late 1940s, and Jim was technically a juvenile, so it's likely the statute of limitations has run out on this particular crime.  But I'm not taking any chances with Jim's freedom; he sounds like a nice guy.

Back then, lumberyard workers would move the empty boxcars around with long poles with big levers wedged between the track and the wheels.  On this particular Saturday, the workers forgot to hide the poles at quitting time and a group of kids - of which Jim was a member - decided to release the brakes on a few cars and nudge them a few feet along with the poles.

Thanks to a small downhill grade, the cars moved easily.  And kept moving.  All three boxcars.  Rolling helter-skelter across Eastern Avenue, the cars finally derailed at the switch block a little farther along the line.

The road was blocked for hours while the Grand Trunk people hunted down an engine crew, fired up the steam engines (these were pre-diesel days) and moved the cars out of the road.

The entire neighborhood turned out to watch the show and marvel at the fact that a "wind storm" had blown all those boxcars across the road.

As Jim H. said in his letter, "It took 60 or more years but the truth is now known."

Jim tells the story better than I've told it here, but he's had 60 years to get it right.  And if I were to relate it verbatim, it would constitute plagiarism, rather than merely "passing the story along."  I'm pretty sure I can't be sued for "passing the story along."

So I'll pass along another, this one from Michele W., who wrote to tell me of the time - not long ago - she was changing the diaper of her sixth-month-old son, Nick.  Michele's daughter, five, was playing nearby with a neighbor girl who came from a family with no sons.

Oh, hell, I'll let Michele tell it:

"(She) only had a sister, so she was very curious when I was changing Nick's diaper," Michele writes.  "She hung around and hung around.  When I had the diaper off, she looked at Nick and said, ‘Boy, wait till you grow up.  You ought to see how big that thing's gonna get!'"

Michele managed to maintain her composure and respond, "Yes, it grows just like the rest of you."

Michele told me she was relieved when that was the extent of her "Kindergarten sex ed class."

Another letter that stands out in my mind is one I received from Thomas S. of Taipei, after I wrote a column about some odd restaurants there.  In that column I poked fun of Taipei's restaurants, some of which feature themes that - to Westerners, at least - seem downright bizarre.

Thomas, a Grand Rapids native who moved to Taipei to work as a translator, took me to task for giving people the wrong impression of his adopted country.  He pointed out that Ding Tai Feng - a Taipei restaurant (with a name that sounds like silverware falling on a tile floor) - was voted by the New York Times as one of the ten best restaurants in the world.  More importantly, a full spread for four might set you back as little as $30, American.

Add to that the fact that Taipei is generally a "no-tipping" district, and, well, you have my attention, to say the least.

By the time Thomas was finished extolling the virtues of Taipei, I was ready to move there myself.  Granted, Thomas' letter wasn't particularly hilarious, but it was very informative.  By the time I'd finished reading it, I felt I knew enough about Taipei to serve on the city council there, though no offers in that regard have been forthcoming.

Some of my favorite letters have been the shortest.  One particularly succinct missive came from a "Mr. Cheng," following the publication of my column on bad Chinese-English translations found in assembly manuals.  Mr. Cheng writes:

"Much big time fun I am finding in your last reading.  We too helping you are keeping up the work.  Good.  The story of which I am speaking is fine success here.  In the home.  Sign, Mr. Cheng."  (The e-mail return address on this one listed the sender as a Greg H., so "Mr. Cheng" might be a pseudonym.)

In the past year or so, I've also received:

- Helpful hints (the perfect sore throat cure from Patricia M.);

- Good suggestions (New Year's Eve resolutions I should definitely consider, from "Squeaky");

- Historical perspectives (tales of picking up dirty, filthy, hippie hitchhikers back in the ‘60s, from Diane R.);

- Compliments galore (many from Dorothy S., who says more nice things about me than I'll ever hear from the Lovely Mrs. Taylor);

- Complaints and criticism (from Scott W., stationed in Iraq, who thinks I should stop being a such a wuss when it comes to doing things Mrs. T's way);

- Concerns (from Mick and Arlynn, who were worried I'd stop writing my column to take a job at the American Tasting Institute);
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- Offers to buy Avon (from Antoinette Q. who can tell from my column mug shot that I desperately need anti-wrinkle eye cream);
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- Lovely Biblical quotes (from John H., who really knows his scripture);
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- Admonitions (from Peter V., who talked me into giving up tanning - he presented a very convincing case); and
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- Comparisons (to Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry, who I love, so this is a Big Compliment, from Sharon Z.).

I usually tackle reader mail Monday mornings.  It's a great way to start my work week.  And it's one of the things that make this the best job in the world.  (With the possible exception of that gig at the American Tasting Institute - I'm still waiting to hear back from them.)

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or stories that are better by far than the junk he writes, e-mail mtaylor@midmich.net or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Want more? Archived "Reality Check" columns as well as photos, links and previously unpublished "mini-columns" may be found online at http://mtrealitycheck.typepad.com.

I have an unfortunate tendency to get myself into uncomfortable situations on a more or less regular basis. This is generally caused by my positively negligent inattention to detail, childishly trusting nature, and inability to pay attention to anything (other than the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue) for any length of time.

This theory was proved over the recent holiday weekend.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I went to visit the kids and grand kids, who were camping near Silver Lake dunes. They had set up camp in a campground (I use the term "campground" only because it costs money to enter. If it were free, the media would refer to it as a "refugee center" and the Peace Corps would send in volunteers) near the lakeshore.

Tents, campers, cars, trucks, recreational vehicles, barking dogs, screaming children, adults and teenagers were "camped" together like eight ounces of sardines in a six-ounce tin. In order to inhale, you first had to wait for the guy next to you to exhale. I would say the overcrowding was the worst of it, but then I'd be ignoring the, ahem, facilities, the use of which required special breathing apparatus generally employed only by fire-fighters entering a burning building.

At least there was a fire pit, which supplied us with that thing most valued by men since primitive times: A place to drink beer. I've heard you can also use a fire pit to build a fire, but this is strictly a secondary function of the thing.

Now, I would have been happy to spend the entire weekend using the fire pit for its primary purpose, but on the way in, The Lovely Mrs. T noticed a great many tourist shops along the main drag leading to the campsite. For Mrs. T, a vacation without shopping is like a day without shopping, which, according to her, is a bad thing.

So off to the shops we went.

The sunglasses in the first shop we went to were reasonably priced and I found a pair that made me look exactly like Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix." Except older, fatter, uglier and with a beard. This was still close enough for me. I took ‘em up to the counter and dropped them next to the stuff Mrs. T had there.

There were more sunglasses displayed in a rack on the counter and I checked these out while Mrs. T paid for her purchases. None of them made me look like anybody famous or attractive, so I held on to the pair I'd picked out earlier.

"Is that all, sir?" asked the girl at the counter.

I realized she'd finished with Mrs. T and was ready to ring up my sunglasses.

"Oh, yup, that's it," I said, digging for my wallet.

As the girl rang up my purchase and made change, I put one arm around Mrs. Taylor, resting my hand lightly on her hip. Actually, my hand was resting somewhat south of her hip, but what the heck, we were on vacation! Propriety be damned! I added an affectionate pat, and turned to give her a peck on the cheek.

The cheek presented to me, however, belonged to someone other than Mrs. Taylor. A cute young blonde girl, who was no doubt wondering why a middle-aged (assuming I live to be at least 100) man had his hand on her fanny.

I was wondering the same thing.

"Oh, uh, sorry," I mumbled. "Thought you were my wife."

The girl said nothing, but continued to stare at me. It took me a second to realize I had yet to remove my hand from her backside. I did so now.

"Um, really," I said. "You look kind of like her, and..."

"Uh-huh," she said.

I scanned the store quickly, spotted Mrs. Taylor standing by the door examining touristy post-cards. "There she is now!" I exclaimed.

I trotted across the store and put my arm around Mrs. T - the real one this time - in an effort to prove I wasn't a long-lost relative of Jack the Ripper.

The impostor turned back to her shopping with a silent glare.

As dumb as grabbing the wrong tush was, I managed a follow-up trick that was even dumber: I told Mrs. Taylor about it. She's not the jealous type, and was more amused than annoyed. So amused, in fact, that a week later she's still asking at the end of every work day: "So, Perv-o, who's booty did you grab today?"

Mrs. Taylor's comedy routine needs some fine-tuning.

I've been painting the exterior of my house. It's not an especially big house and I've been promising The Lovely Mrs. Taylor I'd paint it for years. It was time.

I knew it was time because Mrs. Taylor went to the hardware store, purchased all the paint, brushes and rollers and stacked them up in a pile in front of my fishing boat.

She's subtle, but I can take a hint.

At any rate, I started painting early in June and have been at it ever since. The job has taken most of my weekends and free time, but as of last weekend, it's almost done. There's just a little piece of trim near the roof in back that still needs doing.

Now if I can only get rid of the 75-foot sculpture in my back yard I'll be all set.

What 75-foot sculpture? Maybe I'd better back up a bit and start at the beginning:

It's early June, and the pile of paint, brushes and rollers sits in front of my boat, reminding me every time I walk past that the house needs painting. I look at the paint, the brushes, the rollers. I look at the house. The tall peaks, the overhanging eaves, the little curly-cue fiddley bits that so enchanted me the first time I saw the place; none of these features look all that enchanting from a house-painter's point of view.

What they DO look like is hard to paint.

I borrow my neighbor's aluminum extension ladder. It's much better than mine, but even so it wobbles like Queen Latifa's backside, especially when I'm standing near the top rung. This is especially bothersome for someone like me, who is extremely agoraphobic, which is, as you no doubt know, a fear of agora. Or I might be acrophobic, or ablutophobic, aerophobic, ambulophobic or even anablephobic.

Let me level with you, I don't know from phobias. But I do know that when I stand on top of that ladder my knees start shaking like an epileptic ferret on crack.

So I stand at the top, wobbling, shaking, trying to paint. Trying not to think about the ground w-a-a-a-y down below somewhere. In the end I give up and crawl shamefacedly back down the ladder.

"I can't do it," I tell Mrs. Taylor.

"You can do it," she tells me.

"It's too high," I say.

"You will do it," she says.

"I will do it," I say. Mrs. Taylor would have made a great Marine drill sergeant.

But I won't go back up that ladder. Uh-uh, no way. Call me chicken if you must, but I'm not putting my life on the line for a little fresh paint.

Fortunately, my father-in-law is part owner of a construction company and has an armory of special equipment at his disposal, including a "sky crane," a gas powered crane with a passenger box on one end.

I ask to borrow the sky crane, picturing the device as a relatively small unit that nestles nicely into the back of a pickup truck. What my father-in-law drops off the next day is a house-sized behemoth capable of lifting girders to the tops of skyscrapers or moving a space shuttle onto the launch pad.

It weighs nine tons.

NINE TONS.

I'm not exaggerating here.

After unloading the sky crane and giving me a brief primer in its operation, my father-in-law leaves. Considering what happened to his chainsaw when I borrowed that a few years ago, I can't quite believe he's trusting me with the sky crane.

But there it is. Sitting in my front yard. Completely covering my front yard, in fact.

I gather up the paint, brushes and rollers and load them into the sky crane's box. I fire her up, move the box s-l-o-w-l-y up, then down, then back, then forth. Then into the roof of the porch, where it tears out a hole about a foot across. I patch the hole with some spare roofing tiles and decide not to mention it to Mrs. T.

As the days go by, my skill level with the sky crane improves, until finally I can move it around like a pro. I can squeeze the box into the tightest corners and navigate the heavily weighted base without bringing down nearby trees or crushing any parked cars.

I paint the front of the house, then the sides. The sky crane is, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest labor saving device since the wheel.

Best of all, my neighbors Dave and Jerry are both jealous as hell. I can tell. After years of feeling inferior in the lawn tractor/snow blower department, finally and at last ... I, Mike Taylor ... have the biggest piece of equipment on the block.

Riding around in my diesel-belching, lawn shredding yellow monster, I've never felt more manly. I find myself taking my time with the painting, just to hold on to the sky crane a few days longer.

But finally the day comes when the whole house is done, except for the back.

Now, the sky crane is exactly 9-feet 2-inches from side to side. The gate leading to my back yard is 9-feet 4-inches wide. However, by this time I'm a sky crane expert. I manage deftly to negotiate the space without turning the fence into sawdust.

I park the sky crane in the middle of the yard, then - just for the heck of it - elevate the box (with me in it) to its highest level. I rise above the roofline, then above the treetops. When I come to a stop 75 feet later, I can see the next town over. I can see the rings around Saturn. I can see the storm blowing in from the west that causes the sky crane to sway violently from side to side. Lightning flashes nearby and the sound of thunder rips across the sky. I nearly faint.

I manage to get back to the ground before the rains starts. It rains for three straight days, which makes the ground soft, softer, softest.

Nine tons of sky crane slowly sinks into my back yard.

That was two weeks ago and the sky crane is still there, waiting for a miracle.

I've considered several possibilities: I could paint it a rust-colored orange and tell people it's a sculpture by Alexander Calder. I could install a ticket booth at the gate and charge neighborhood kids 50-cents each to ride in the basket. Or, I could just wait for the next rain, when what's left above ground will likely sink below the surface like a woolly mammoth into the La Brea Tar Pits.

Or - and this is my last choice - I could call my father-in-law and admit that what happened to his chainsaw a few years back was nothing compared to what I've done with his sky crane.

When the house paint starts flaking next time, I'm having siding installed.