The Guerba Truck (the Beast) has one distinct feature that not many other Overland trucks can lay claim to - A roof seat, cozy enough for four. It's a treat to ride up top, you get a 360 degree perspective of the lay of the land and are the first to greet the myriad natives mulling around the road and countryside. The seat can be folded down like a bed, a few therma rests can be used as back rests and the roof transforms into a pretty sweet seat!. There is a big red bar (barely pictured, see here for pictorial reference) in the front of the seat that acts as a blocker in case tree limbs or other obstacles should be too low for proper clearance (and let me tell you, it's there for a reason). As long as you keep your body and limbs inside the frame of the red pipe bar almost all obstacles will be diverted away and miss you...most of the time.

Well, one day, Zana (not pictured), myself, and Deb, sitting in that order, me in the middle, were up on top as we motored over the harsh dirt roads of Zambia en route to South Luangwa National Park. Now the middle is usually the safest place on the roof seat because trees are obviously located on the sides of the road and the side seats are most likely to encounter the limbs, or so I thought. Besides, the middle seat is the best vantage point for the big metal plaque in front of us, engraved with "Beware of Low Lying Obstacles. Ride on the Roof Seat at Your Own Risk." Hmmmmmm

It seemed like a perfect day. The sun was out and the clouds were beautiful. For an hour and a half we bathed in the sun, swapping stories, contemplating life, and snapping a few photos of the natives and scenery. I began to get a little fidgety and bored (who me?) and decided to sit up on top of the truck, above the actual seat...where my head stuck above the frame of the red safety bar. Dum dum dum Usually I wouldn't dream of doing this, but we hadn't encountered a tree the whole day, I wanted to attempt to get a few pictures and, I was being fickle and needed another position. I had my camera out and took a picture or two from my new perch. Just about the time I reached down and finished swapping my wide angle lens for the jumbo macro lens, out of the corner of my eye I suddenly saw Deb (sitting to my right) duck into the roof seat. At the same time I felt a piercing twinge on the right side of my lip. Next think I know, an entire tree branch (maybe a couple inches in diameter at the core) is scraping over my forehead and about to go into my eyes. My right arm flew up involuntarily in a vain attempt to shield myself from the branch, but it was too late.

The wicked branch knifed into my head, forehead, face, and severely into the shield that was my right arm's bicep, flipping me heels over head (please, no Tears for Fears jokes) backwards onto the top middle of the truck and throwing my camera God knows where. Now mind you, the top of the truck is a thin half-translucent plastic lining over several cross members, not quite strong enough to support people walking on it. But there I am struggling to pull my head from my crotch and complete the full backwards somersault (the Russian Judge only gave a 5 for this effort). Next thing I realize, I am three feet or so from the roof seat and beginning to slide to the right - OFF THE TRUCK! Mind you, we are still motoring along the potholed roads at about 50 kph. AAAAGGGHHHHHHH!!!!. Immediately I extended by fingers, arms, and legs spread eagle, Spiderman style as wide as possible to brace myself, then began to look up and slide my body back into the middle of the truck. What is going on? Stuff like this only happens to cartoon characters!

The girls were still in ducking mode and taking care of themselves. When their heads popped up they looked around in disbelief there was Josh on the ROOF! A horrific expression overcame their face. Though I didn't realize it at the time, my worst fears had come true - There was blood. The slight pain I felt on my bicep and my lip and forehead were scratches and gouges suffered by the impact with the tree branch. To tell you the truth, at that moment, I was just happy to still be on the truck and not tumbling down the road into a dusty pothole, dead!

The girls reached out and pulled me back in and begin tending to me like nurses at a battle scene (hey, Deb is actually a registered nurse! - you know I planned that.) I reached for my lip and forehead, drawing my hand back full of bright red blood. Bringing my arm up also allowed my to see the cats claw-like scratches on my bicep, coated in gory blood as well. Deb started swabbing up my arm with tissues as Zana tended to my head. SHIT! How could I be so stupid to let something like this happen? (please no answers, it's a rhetorical question).

The only thing that saved me from the whole shocking ordeal was laughter. Almost immediately after regaining my balance and composure I started laughing my nuts off and the girls had no problem joining in. I mean, come on, it WAS funny. We cleaned out the black tree bark from within the gorges on my arm with a litre of water from my nalgene bottle. The arm cuts were pretty deep and I figured they would scar (and I would be right!!). The scratches on my forehead formed a giant X and the cut to my lip hurt like hell but they were relatively on the surface and would heal in a week or so. The pain and bruises were minimal, save those suffered by my ego and pride.

Now mind, you are probably wondering why the truck hadn't stopped or why no one from inside had noticed anything. Well 1), The truck is so loud that you can hardly hear anything and 2) Tree branches scrape horrendously over the top of the roof all the time so no one thinks twice about what they do hear or see. There were accounts later that Sean had seen a silhouette of a leg flailing on the roof but figured that was impossible, it must have been a branch. So the truck didn't stop

And I refused to stop the truck. I refused to descend from the roof seat to announce to the world that I had been the biggest idiot in the world. So we traveled about another 1:15 before we landed in South Luangwa, that gave me plenty enough time to formulate an elaborate tale and explanation: a leopard jumped from a tree and... a flock of vultures...the girls got a bit rowdy and...

Once we stopped everyone got a good view of the gimpy Josh but reactions were more of pity and griefthey apparently didn't see the humor in the situation like we did. The picture above doesn't do the incident justice, for it was taken after the blood was cleaned up but you can see the scratches on my forehead and bicep as well as my left arm. Bruised ego not shown.

Moral of the Story: No matter how hard they try to be inconspicuous, Americans always stick out; don't be stupid, play it safe and simply accept it.