Netbook on top of car + 50 mph + gravity = only scratches

Ok, so this is an answer to prayer, a miracle and a surreal moment all at once. We just left the in-laws and because i was carrying a 25 pound man child in a car seat (his name is Sage and he is awesome) i absent mindedly put my padfolio (containing 2 yellow pads and about 20 papers i was working on at the time), a book (tribes by seth godin) and my acer netbook on top of my expedition (about 6.5 feet from the ground).

At the first stop light i head something shift and thought it was stuff in the backseat coming to a rest on the door. because we didn't want to open the door and have things fall out, jeanne checked out the noise and found nothing. i entered the dallas north tollway on ramp at frankford and accelerated to about 50 mph when i heard a thud on in the back. i checked my rear view mirror and saw a flurry of papers and knew in an instant i was gonna have a bad night. i knew exactly what it was. i couldn't stop because by this time i was doing 60 and well into traffic. i cautiously took the next exit, stopped, got out and hoped that somehow only the papers fell and the netbook was stuck somewhere in the roof rack, nope!

i sped back on the tollway took the next exit and proceeded to the drop zone. i called my father in law for assistance, pulled to the side of the tollway on ramp, turned on the hazards and made my way a quarter mile down the tollway picking up my book, padfolio and miscellaneous papers but no netbook. bother, i said to myself, its probably got a cracked screen and has already been run over 10 times. But i prayed as i walked along the tollway as my wife and daughter prayed in the car. then i saw it, upside down and seemingly in one piece. it was. i picked it up, ran back to the car and headed for home.

my wife took inventory; one book (albeit dinted but very readable), one padfolio (complete with beauty marks), surprisingly, ALL the papers that i was working on (which was by far the most valuable item and most desired for retrieval) and one netbook. we pushed the on button with low expectations and guess what happened? Nothing. but thats ok, i thought, i can remove the hard drive and get my data back (most of it was already backed up since i use google docs).

all in all i thought, i got everything back, everything. and for sure i got the most important things (my working documents) and hey, i'll probably even get lucky and retrieve most of the data from the hard drive. when i got home and finally got my hands on the netbook, i noticed the baterry was ajar...see where i'm going here? yep, works like a charm. this acer once aspire netbook is one tough mutha.

ok, so the pics here are of my netbook. the disassembled one was because i took it apart to check for loose wires (which i found one of the wires connecting the wifi modem that was easily put back into place). the other one is the exterior with its many beauty marks.

so........if anyone knows anyone at acer, tell them to look this story up. i'll sale it to them and even star in a commercial or straight to dvd movie about my incident.

(c) 2009 RB Jones