Some days, dear pals, luck is simply on your side. The traffic lights are all green. Public transport isn’t delayed. The legend at the fish & chips shop slips you an extra potato cake. It’s all going your way.
And then there’s some days where you probably just should’ve stayed in bed.
36-year-old Sydney bloke Gareth Clear had one of those days on Sunday.
Clear, a keen biker, was cycling his way through Manly Dam when, upon attempting to take off, one of his feet missed the pedal sending him tumbling to the ground. Anyone who’s ever ridden a bike before will have had this happen countless times. It’s never very serious, and only tends to result in a light bump or scrape, a slight bruise to the ole’ ego, and literally nothing more.
Except on this occasion, Clear happened to be carrying his iPhone in his back pocket. And the angle and force it struck the ground with was apparently the exact, precise, pinpoint set of circumstances that caused the phone’s lithium battery to absolutely flip its shit.
After he stood up, Clear noticed an “incredible plume of smoke” coming from his butt pocket, followed by “a searing pain that went along with it – as though someone had pushed a huge block of ice against my leg.“
Upon closer inspection, his thick bike shorts had already melted, and the fired-up phone was stuck to his leg. Having to literally punch the thing off (trying to reef it off there resulted in burning fingers), Clear hung around for about 20 minutes, in absolute agony, waiting for the white-hot phone to cool down before walking back to Manly.
Turns out it wasn’t just a minor burn, either. The phone was so hot that it tore through THREE LAYERS of skin (that nasty-looking injury you can see in the photo above), requiring him to be sent to the Royal North Shore burns unit for a skin graft, which he is now at home recovering from whilst being hooked up to a machine for the next week that helps stave off infection.
Apple, apparently, have contacted Clear but have not clarified anything beyond the fact that they’re looking into the issue.
As for Clear, he’s definitely keen to get back on the bike again after all this nonsense. But maybe the phone will migrate away from the buttock region from now on.
“It’s a tragedy waiting to happen. A mini bomb.”
That’s just how luck works, ya know? Sometimes you find $5 on the ground, and sometimes your arse gets burned by an exploding phone.
Sunrise/sunset.
Source: Daily Mail.
Photo: Gareth Clear/Instagram.
