Everyone nows that there are many uses for duct tape that don’t involve duct work. It can piece eye glasses together; it makes a fine substitute for stitches and a trip to the ER; and its first cousin, electrical tape, can be wrapped around the heads and ears of Rugby players for protection during a scrum. I even observed one inventive snowboarder who taped his sack lunch to the front of his board. He not only saved himself the expense of renting a locker but was also assured of proper refrigeration.

While duct tape can hold the world together, there is another material which is often overlooked of equal importance: plastic wrap. Plastic wrap not only protects produce and meat, but when combined with duct tape also does a great job of protecting people. 

My girlfriend Karen recently called saying she had a delicate problem. It seemed she had "a funny thingy" growing in an odd place on her backside which was recently removed.
The removal and subsequent stitches were the least of her problems. She couldn’t get the area wet for three days. It was the middle of July and the average daytime temperature was 97 degrees. Since her house didn’t have air conditioning, she said she didn’t know which was riper, the fruit or her.

My suggestion was simple; just seal the area in plastic wrap. I had used this technique one summer after I broke my arm. I was in a plaster cast which ran from my shoulder to my hand and there are only so many sitzbaths you can take before you feel that your upper half is going to sprout vegetation.

But while taping an arm in plastic was challenging, encasing a thigh, a hip and half a gluteus maximus was an engineering feat. With the aid of a mirror and a sharp scissors, she carefully wrapped, twisted, folded the delicate area and then secured the entire project with water repellent duct tape. 

The result was a three fold success. She not only regained that shower fresh feeling and kept her stitches dry, but because of the heat and steam, she lost an inch and a half from her right side. 

But the best use of plastic wrap goes to my friend Bob for becoming the living embodiment of the Man From Glad. Back in his carefree bachelor days, Bob had a motorcycle and a good friend named Ted. 

Ted was quite the daredevil. In the summer he would draw quite a crowd at the local pool by completing complicated dives which should have qualified for the Olympics. (Actually, while half the crowd was watching the diving, the other half came to see if his Speedo was going to stay on.) During the winter he became one of the original hotdog skiers.

So the fact that Ted had a motorcycle and wanted to take a road trip from California to Yellowstone National Park came as no surprise. After some fast talking over a few beers, Bob agreed with Ted that this was an excellent adventure he couldn’t turn down.

The day they departed they were quite a sight. Ted was magnificently adorned in custom leather pants and jacket. Bob was also equally coordinated but his clothes were of the denim variety. 

Since this was California in late September, I was sure that Ted was over dressed for the trip. It was hot, dry and very windy. Undaunted, they rode off into the sunrise and on to high adventure.

While much of the trip was great fun, excellence can turn to bogus faster than you can say snow in the Rockies. And what had been a warm early fall in California turned into the middle of winter in Wyoming.

The boys ran into some cold weather coming out of Yellowstone National Park. Not quite an Alberta Clipper but close enough. The rain turned sleet-like, the road became slick and the boys started to slide on the windy road leaving the park.

It turned out that Ted’s leathers were all he needed to fight the elements. Bob was another story. Denim, being made of 100 percent cotton, soaked up more and more water with every twist in the road. It didn’t take long before Bob was a shivering, soggy mess.

They stopped at a small town to dry off. Bob found a laundromat and got his layers of blue denim dry and decided to regroup. Feeling he needed a little more time to defrost, Bob sent Ted ahead to scope out a place to sleep in the next town.

As Ted waited at the appointed spot, he was hardly prepared for the site coming down the road. There was Bob riding into town completely encased in trash bags. A big black hefty variety covered the trunk of his body; tall white kitchen liners adorned his arms and legs; while his feet and hands were clad in small wastepaper basket bags. All were securely held together with duct tape.

There is an old saying that Rome wasn’t built in a day. But considering the ancient Romans had neither plastic wrap nor duct tape I’m surprised it was built at all.