A fresh produce worker went for the ride of his life after trying to stop a large patio umbrella from falling over in strong winds on March 25.
The spine-tingling moment was recorded on closed-circuit television surveillance technology and showed Sadik Kocadalli and two other grocery men running to secure a parasol, which the wind threatened to blow away from a wholesale market hall in the southern Turkish city of Osmaniye.
Kocadalli thought using his body weight by standing on the parasol would be enough to pin it down, but he was wrong.
After being lifted about 13 feet into the air, Kocadalli jumped off and suffered a minor ankle injury.
“It went up three, four meters [9-13 feet] and I thought, ‘This won’t work,’ so I jumped down,” he said. “Thankfully, I am okay. The umbrella hit a pole and fell back down.”
The strong winds are believed to have come from a 10-minute tornado that had recently hit a nearby area.
The video of Kocadalli’s brief flight has gone viral, with many people likening his ascent to Walt Disney classic movie Mary Poppins, whose lead character famously flew in with an open umbrella for a nanny job interview.
“I’m Mary Poppins Y'all!!!” Mark C. Johnson said.
Some people gave Kocadalli a new nickname—the flying turkey.
“He flew away like a turkey,” Mary B Tudor said.
“Flying turkey right there,” Terry Mitchum said.
Some others drew parallels between the tornado in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer classic movie The Wizard of Oz and the man’s parasol flight.
“When he finally touched the ground, he said, ‘Oh, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Turkey anymore,” Karim Pluma said.
“So that’s how they are now planning on getting inside the United States,” Ron McAnally said. “I bet he thought he’d end up in Kansas too.”
