In an effort to show up the automotive company CEOs who flew to Washington in corporate jets to ask Congress for a bailout, auto worker Joe “The Rear Door Handle Tightener” Wysoki is attempting to drive a corporate jet from Detroit to Washington to beg for his own bailout. “I need a new roof on the bungalow, the wife needs her first husband’s tattoo removed and the kid needs braces cuz his grill got rusty and warped,” said Wysoki. “Not to mention gas for the Learjet.”
Wysoki purchased the Learjet on eBay when an unnamed CEO was forced to sell it to pay alimony to his fourth wife, buy a diamond-studded Wii for his young trophy fifth wife and donate $500,000 to the Bush library for a pardon for trying to sell Hawaii to Russia in exchange for a vodka import deal. “That guy was so desperate, I got it for $1000 and a signed note saying I never signed anything.”
Wysoki had originally planned to park the jet in his backyard and convert it into a high-speed sausage smoker, but when he heard about the automotive CEOs flying their corporate jets to Washington to beg for money, he knew he had to make his own statement. “I don’t have a pilot’s license and heights give me nosebleeds, so I’m driving the rig to Washington on the good old all-American freeway system. If it was good enough for Burt Reynolds in ‘Smokey and the Bandit’, it’s good enough for me.”
Wysocki planned the trip through his local AAA office so his wife could pick up souvenirs along the way. “She’s never been outside of Michigan, except for that trip to Chicago when she was 16 that she don’t like to talk about,” said Wysocki. “She likes those toothpick holders that look like little tree stumps. She’s one of them environmentalists.”
He doesn’t have an appointment scheduled with Congress, but doesn’t expect much trouble in getting one. “I’m driving a plane down Pennsylvania Avenue with an Obama bumper sticker. I’m a one-man inauguration parade float.” Wysoki is about a week from arriving and is currently in Kentucky making an overnight stop in an RV park. “I installed a propane tank on the side and a luggage rack on the top so it doesn’t look suspicious.”