How to make a splash

Talk about good intentions going wrong. As partial payment for all the hours that my bookbinding guru has put in trying to give me some practical experience in the field, I had purchased a gallon of the special glue that we use for almost all our applications. It goes by many names but the one I bought is called Jade 403. I received it from UPS last Wednesday so I was going to take it down to Pat on Thursday evening. Unfortunately, he had gotten his flu shot earlier that day so wasn't feeling up to working with me.

This evening was the next opportunity. I pulled up to his house right at 6:00 pm, parking funny because it is garbage day for Pat tomorrow and the streets were lined with trash cans. I got out and carefully pulled my walker from the back of my Highlander. Then just as carefully I placed a bag of books needing work on the walker and followed the bag with the gallon of glue. Everything we well until I started pushing the walker up the front walkway. The plastic container slid neatly off the seat and onto the sidewalk. Upon the bottle's impact, the lid popped off and glue began pouring out. I immediately reached down and pulled the bottle upright. There was about half a gallon still in the bottle thanks to the glue's viscosity. Then I went as fast as I could to alert Pat since he would know where cleanup materials would be.


Interestingly, Pat began by scooping up and returning to the bottle as much glue as he could. That was possible only because 99% of the spill was on smooth concrete. Once he was satisfied he couldn't effectively get any more, he drug the garden hose out front and began spraying the glue across the sidewalk and into the drainage gutter. My guess is that we finished with about 3/4 of a gallon. Pat was running really low on glue so he appreciated the glue. He just wasn't expecting sidewalk delivery.