Accident ruins 800 pound man's big date

When Manuel Uribe went out on a date, he made all the necessary arrangements: a forklift to carry him out of the house and a flatbed tow truck big enough to haul the formerly half-ton man and his bed to a party.

But even the open road wasn't big enough to handle Uribe's dream of celebrating a budding romance and his success in losing about 440 pounds.

Uribe was halfway to a picnic near his Monterrey-area home on Sunday when one of the posts holding a sun-shielding tarp over his bed hit an overpass.



Uribe's blood pressure dropped so much his doctors advised him not to go on and the celebration - being documented by about two dozen photographers and reporters from around the world - was cancelled.

"We were going to celebrate that I've been losing weight for two years and that it was my girlfriend's birthday," Uribe said in a telephone interview. "The saddest part was that I couldn't fulfill my dream of taking my girlfriend out to eat."

Uribe says despite the setback, he still hopes to go out with his girlfriend on June 11, when he will turn 43. "We'll just have to plan it better," he said.