…in the same vein.
What is the absolutely craziest thing you’ve ever done that you survived?
Ours was probably undertaking a 4000 gallon pond dig (most of the back yard) with a Mantis tiller. But outside of that—probably deciding in my 6th decade and Jane’s 5th to take up ice skating. Hey, it was safer than downhill skiing. We not only decided on ice skating, we decided on figure skating, and it’s been the absolute best exercise in the world. Talk about fine motor control.
Mine, somewhat back, was running out of money in Athens, in company with a 65 year old traveling companion, with a week to go before our prepaid plane flight. We had to move out of the hotel we were in, we went to the Plaka district, and tried to get help from the American embassy, who were no help at all, and wouldn’t even listen to our situation. Then we set about a campaign of trying to get arrested so the American embassy would have to help us. But all the Greek people were so kind to us, one even cashing a personal check from America on her account, that we couldn’t cheat them. (Defrauding an innkeeper was our planned route to the pokey.)
Well, nothing worked. On one night, we went to the Greek theater, about a 50 cent ticket, and got lost, and hiked several miles into the warehouse district and back alleys. When we came out into a questionable neon-lit area, where there was at least life, we had to spend money on a taxi to get home, and directed the taxi driver the wrong way down a major boulevard to get there. But it was 3 am.
We finally decided Athens was too expensive, and we found a hotel in the village that Thebes now is, for much cheaper. So we caught a bus, which also contained a woman with a young goat, and headed for Thebes. A 10 cent taxi would take you from the bus station up to the top of the hill once you got there. And our hotel was, well, for 2.00 a night, you couldn’t complain. We had to be there for three days.
It was during the junta, so the presence of two strangers in town aroused the interest of the local military police, who were trying to find out who we were and what we were taking pictures of, and I understand enough modern Greek to know that, in the restaurant, the two uniformed guys were asking about us. I was really tempted to say, in Greek, “Hi, there. Can I help you?” but wisely kept my mouth shut. We’d just come from Athens, where I had to snatch Audrey out of the way of a careening truckload of soldiers in riot gear, who were bound for the neighboring university, where there was quite a fracas going on, and you could get arrested for expressing an opinion. It was literally illegal to talk politics even in your house.
So we had no good situation in Thebes, either. But we made the acquaintance of a couple of Brits who were the local teachers, and they knew a German guy who was running a spinning-mill in the village. And they knew where there were ancient ruins, and the German guy had a car. He proved interesting: he’d been on one side of WWII, in the German army on the Russian campaign, and had a circular dent in his forehead which had been put there by a mule which was hauling gear on that ill-fated advance. He hated mules, he said. The elder Brit had been in the RAF. Audrey’s students had been in the Italian campaign on the Allied side. So there we all sat, exchanging views on WWII, in a Theban cafe.
And then we set off with two absolute strangers to see the ruins, which were miles out in the country, an undeveloped site, in a farmer’s field, probably flattened when Alexander the Great had a snit with the Greeks—he is alleged to have destroyed the town, and left standing only one house, that of Pindar the poet, whom he admired, to show his control over his troops. (I’m sure Pindar wasn’t grateful.) And he ordered the release of a woman who’d attacked his soldiers while defending her home. He was funny like that.
At any rate, this place was flattened, right down to potsherds. We wandered about, mapping out buildings. And then we saw something coming. A pack of dogs.
Well, we knew we were trespassing. We ran for the car, the elder Brit and I helping Audrey, who didn’t run fast, and the younger Brit sprinting for dear life. It was twilight. The lead dog was a white shepherd type, so he was easy to see. There were about 10 others. The German guy got to the car, got in and slammed the door. The younger Brit opened the doors for us and got in. The elder Brit and I threw Audrey into the middle back seat. Then the elder Brit and I did an ‘after you, Alphonse,’ routine as the pack closed in. Finally he shoved me hard into the front seat, he dived into the back, we slammed the doors, and the white dog hit my window full-on. The whole pack was clawing at the car and the German guy started up and we got out of there.
The 2 archaeologists that had started to excavate had died: they drank the local water. Since that was an area of Greece I had once been very interested in going into, in archaeology, I considered that an omen.
And I read when we finally got back to Athens, that a dog pack near Thebes had put several people in the hospital, two in critical condition.
Yeah. I bet.
Sheesh! Outside of wartime adventures I can’t think of anything to match that! The packs that chased bicyclers in Isla Vista in the ’70s were only 3-5 strong, and I never heard of anyone being sent to the hospital by them. You are one gods-protected duck! Athena? Hera? Zeus? Apollo?
Hmm… I’d have to say that the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done was to eat at a Marine chow hall. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? We’ll see.
I was an Army Specialist assigned to help out some Marines in South Central Iraq. Our job had been to guard, and live at, a set of bridges that cross Highway 1, which runs from Kuwait all the way to Turkey. Sometimes, one of the units stationed there would do something stupid, whether Marine or Army, and the Iraqis would launch mortars at us, but these Iraqis were different from the others we had dealt with. Namely: They could hit things inside the camp consistently.
I was minding my own business one day, enjoying one of the few sit down meals I got that entire month when I, and the other inhabitants of the Chow hall, were joined by a mortar round. Not a pleasant situation to say the least, especially since we had to sit in a bunker for thirty minutes after the last round landed. One Marine was wounded, but they got him out of there in time to save his life, assuming it was even threatened by the wound at all.
So you see, the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done was to eat in a Chow Hall.
Mine is somewhat embarrassing, because I brought it on myself and promise I’ll NEVER do it again. I was the Information Systems Officer for Commander, Destroyer Squadron 32, and we were inport Rio de Janeiro for a week. One of the chiefs on the flagship was married to a woman who lived in Rio, so we got to borrow her condo, which was 2 blocks from the beach at Barra de Tejuca. The sand is a lovely white, and it’s fine, so that when you walk in it, it squeaks. Well, being a beach, being warm, and we were in a festive mood, there was plenty of alcohol consumed by all parties. Then I made the stupid mistake of going out into the water to body surf. Uh-huh….I was doing fine for a while, until I looked up and the shore was a l-o-n-g way away, and I was caught in a rip current. This beach has no lifeguards, so I knew I was in big trouble. I knew, when I was sober, that you swim across a rip and let the surf wash you closer to shore, but as stated above, we weren’t sober. I started swimming in towards shore and even got as far as the shelf of sand, but it kept washing out from under my feet. Then I tried backstroking across the surf, but kept getting breaking waves in my face and so couldn’t get a decent breath. I decided to try again for the beach by freestyle swimming, and was just at the point of exhaustion and giving up, when I looked up and saw two boys on a paddleboard right in front of me. They’d come out to get me after my friend had sent them out. I found out later that there was a delay because another one of our party was in similar trouble, and he seemed to be in more danger than I. This was on a Saturday, on Monday, two swimmers drowned at the same beach. For months afterwards, I was afraid to swim, even in the local pool, unless I could touch bottom. If I crossed over to the deep end, I’d start to panic. I’m over that, thankfully, but it was a major source of nightmares for months afterwards.
While I’ve done a bunch of stuff in my life, none of it was particularly dangerous, and with a little planning, almost anyone could have done it. It did give me a bunch of good memories though.
The only potentially dangerous thing that happened to me was when I working on my MLIS. We were meeting for a weekend intensive — a Saturday and Sunday, 8-12 hours of class time. The class met in the basement of the campus library, and the day had been rainy, off and on, sometimes heavy, with occasional brief power outages.
Towards evening, the power went out again. A few of us had keychain flashlights, so we turned those on and were debating whether to call it a night, when someone noticed a small stream of water coming from the direction of the stairwell. We thought that the stairwell had a big puddle that was starting to come in, when the water suddenly began to come in much harder and faster. We had been leisurely packing up to go, but the water rose to shin deep within a couple of minutes, and was still rising. Computers and office equipment started coming down the hall on the crest of another surge, and we realized the exit stairwell was probably full of water.
The instructor and a couple of other students checked to see if we could get out of the basement windows, but they were all sealed. No one panicked, two people picked up one of the chairs and smashed out a window, then we all helped each other climb out. Librarians are cool and resourceful under pressure!
The flash flood filled the basement to within a foot of the ceiling and completely ruined most of what was down there, including stored maps and documents, the building mechanical and electrical room, and faculty offices. It shut down the library for 6 months while the staff did damage control and tried to salvage what they could. One picture I saw in the paper later was a compact car stuck about 15 feet up in a tree from the flood. Trash and branches had made a temporary dam across a bridge at the top of the valley, and when it broke, a wall of water went down the stream.
After the flood, intensive weekends were removed from the course requirements. I am proud of how our class handled the situation.
Being out at sea during a January blizzard. 45 foot seas are HUGE when you are looking up at them from the trough of the wave.
Two years ago, at the first Shejidan Convention (the second one is being held right now in Spokane, WA.) we had a canoe trip down the Little Spokane River. I understand they’re having a repeat of that as well.
My 19 year old daughter was in front, my wife (who is deathly afraid of drowning was in the middle) and I was in the back. I had been canoing before and my daughter said she had during the girls camp she’d attended a few years earlier; I trusted her. The guide had said that the banks were hidden by fallen branches of the trees along the way, so if we were to come to close to them we should lean forward or backward – just lie back down – so we wouldn’t tip the canoe over sideways. They gave everyone a short lesson on paddling; it really should have been longer. CJ and Jane were together in one canoe. That may not have been very wise.
No sooner were we in the water, when my daughter started paddling like a maniac off the left side of the canoe. I asked her to stop. I told her to stop. I pleaded for her to stop. But 19 year olds think they know everything and she kept on. I was unable to keep the canoe from heading to the right bank, The current and my daughter’s paddling took us right for a cluster of tree branches. And just like the guide said not to, my daughter leaned to the side and capsized us.
I found myself in the very unenviable position of trying to hold on to my paddle, my canoe, the little plastic bag with my camera, my wife and a tree branch all at the same time. I lost the paddle but got the rest together. It took 12-13 minutes to convince my wife that she could let go of the tree and get to shore. And no she was in no danger of drowning.
I gave my daughter a longer course on paddling and coordinating our strokes. We became a very good team and had no troubles for the rest of the trip. Except for when we very nearly had the same troubles that CJ and Jane had in the middle. A huge tree covered the swift current and their boat . . . Well I’ll let her tell that story if she wants!
Now, Spence, in our defense, due to communications mixup, we didn’t get there until after the instructions were given. Everyone had paired up, although we’d planned on going together anyway, but we were just handed a boat and wished good luck. This year, we were there for the instructions and what a difference a little knowledge makes! 😀 Next time, we’ll team up again.
Well, you remember that we took that tumble at the very first curve in the river! I was so cocky and sure that WE’d be OK! then we tumbled in. You’ll remember how Mrs S was so scared? She said she wished we could have come up this year to join you.
And I do remember you coming in — late — in a cloud of dust! We were so happy to see you. We had so much fun. I understand you had even more fun this year (though not the life threatening kind).
Gotta agree, Pence. Coming back from the Mediterranean after a cruise, we were stuck off Cape Hatteras in the middle of 3 different storms. The bridge was 21 feet above the waterline, the ship was 213 feet long, 45 feet wide, and drafted 14 feet. I was looking up at the crests and they were way above me.
As an adult, I play it safe, but as a kid I once stupidly dove under the pool cover of the recreation pool where I practiced for swim team. I was trying to make it to the other side, but found they’d already covered it tight and made one last ditch effort, air running out, for the stairs into the shallow end. Thankfully, I was able to emerge from under the canvas covering before the workers had finished pulling it to the edges. They’d had no idea I was under there.
I sometimes reflect that I could have easily drowned that day.
Mine seem to involve driving. By far the most dangerous was simply trying to keep driving while I was falling asleep.
Another time I was vacationing with a friend and we decided to move from Sequoia Nat’l Park to Fish Camp, near Yosemite, with the thought of going in the next day.
This is a very long trip with basically two possible routes: 2-3 hours going out to the San Joaquin Valley, up a freeway for an hour or two, and back into the Sierras for 2-3 hour; or you can spend about 6 hours in the Sierras driving on switchbacks. It being a beautiful day and having a roadster at the time we chose the switchbacks.
As I didn’t want to be driving or navigating in the dark, I was driving quickly. Never over the limit–the straights weren’t long enough–but up shifting and down shifting every couple seconds. I came around a corner to a fine, upstanding buck in the center of my lane. Surely having heard me coming, he leaped up onto the hill before I could think. Fortunately! The ensuing conversation was less auspicious:
gf: Aaaaaa!
me: Wow! A six pointer!
gf: AAAAAA!!!!!! (striking me)
me: Ow! Hey! NARROW BRIDGE! NARROW BRIDGE!!
gf: Rrrrrrr…
If that wasn’t enough for the poor dear, I shifted in my sleep all night.
Another time, I was driving a much less capable car, a Honda Civic, on the eastern side of the Sierras, Reno to Mammoth Lakes on 395, at night. This is a road carved into mountains. The passes have cheery names like Devil’s Gate and Deadman’s Summit. If you go off the edge, you might have as much as seven seconds to contemplate your mortality. So, I wisely caught up to another car on a straight and followed it distantly enough that I would be warned by its brake lights, and if its taillights disappeared off the edge, I would have plenty of time to stop.
Despite this precaution, I was coming into corners too fast, never having seen a brake light from my pioneer. I started looking, too, for attitude changes in the tail lights, indicating he was slowing by downshifting. Still problems. Again and again. Finally we pulled into Lee Vining, a sleepy little mounting town near the turn to the Tioga Pass into Yosemite. Slow speed limits, so I caught up and discovered what I had been following in my dumpy little Civic. A Lotus Europa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Europa
Hahaha! That’s an awesome story! But your Honda Civic probably outran his Lotus in the long run. You know what they say about the Lotus: Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.
=]
Heh. You wouldn’t say that ice skating is safer than downhill skiing if you saw me on skates! No, seriously, I took up downhill skiing at the end of my 5th decade and, so far, things are pretty good. That said, I took a lot of lessons, made sure I had good equipment, and now I prepare for the season by conditioning. I tend to ski slowly and in control, and try not to emulate those guys hucking the Alaskan cliffs in the Teton Gravity Research videos I like to watch, especially in the summer. DH decided to ski like those guys, and he’s the one who got hurt. Me, now I can tiptoe down easy black diamonds, as long as I’m not recovering from a muscle strain and my boots fit (two things that held me back last season). And I’m still not crazy enough to venture Timberline during summer season. That Palmer Glacier is slick this time of year, even at 7 am!
But ice skating (shudder). The very thought of it makes my ankles hurt.
Still, from an outsider’s perspective, my occasional hobbies of skiing and jumping horses over fences probably looks risky (when, actually, I’m one of the wussiest folks you’ll ever see doing either).
Probably the scariest thing that happened to me was when some drunken bowhunters came across our isolated backwoods camp and wanted to claim it for themselves. We had guns. I don’t think they did. Still, after they left (not after a few cuss words were exchanged), we packed up camp and drove over a lot of backroads before staying the night in a motel two counties over. And as it was, those guys drove by (at a distance) several times while we were packing up camp…
One of the crazier things I’ve done was wander around Rome at two in the morning about a week after Roma had won the Serie A cup. I heard, later, that all of Rome had pretty much rioted for two days, broke into the Circus Maximus and partied like it was 1999. I had arrived in Rome about a week after, alone, age twenty and had never been on my own before. I got a room at a hostel/hotel mix on the top floor from a ex-pat US woman. It ended up being the best room I stayed in throughout my entire time in Europe. The first night in Rome I couldn’t sleep, so I went out. Mind you, I was in the whorehouse district near the railroad station. So of course it was the best time to go out on my own.
Yeah. Don’t know what I was thinking either.
It did, however, turn out to be the most awesome night of my life. I wandered around Rome, finally finding my way down the Colosseum. It was the night of the full moon, so I sat and watched it rise through the arches of the ruins. When it was high enough I walked up the steps to one side of the Forum, and…sort of hopped the wall. The whole Forum was full of moonlight. I could see the paved streets and the triumphal arches, all of it. I’m still not sure how I didn’t get arrested – or mugged – but I made it back to my room by three or four in the morning without one single person bothering me.
Although I do have to admit that the wall hopping does come close to the accidental trespassing I did in Pompey. I will never forget the sight of a hairy, pot-bellied, shirtless Italian man shouting at me as he ran down the road waving his arms. Needless to say, I did an about face and GTFO’d. I do, however, rank the sight of the moon through the arches of the Colosseum far higher than the nameless, sweaty man.
Though the second story is much more fun to tell at parties!
These are great stories, and it’s humbling to follow up on some of them, particularly those posted by servicemen and servicewomen. But one of my most vividly stupid moves does involve ice skating.
I live in California now, but I grew up in western Massachussetts. When a winter in Massachussetts just begins to think about becoming spring, there are stretches of warm days in which a lot of snow will melt and even pool onto the earth, often followed by a sharp cold front which turns all of that water and slushy snow right back into solid ice.
My family lived in rural MA, and beyond our backyard were acres of woodland. It belonged to my family and our neighbors, and property lines got kind of jumbled up, but nobody seemed to care whose kids went skating across whose land. That’s what we could do when seasonal events were just so: skate between the trees of the forest.
I found what would in summer have been a leafy clearing in the woodland but what was at that perfect point in time a small, personal skating oasis. Inside of this oval were two small, sturdy trees standing maybe fifteen feet apart. I took them for an obstacle course and spent a long time attempting figure-eights in and around them.
At some point I realized that one could skate up to one of the trees, grab onto it, and swing around with an explosive increase in velocity. I did this. I was sailing backwards at an exhilarating clip. It was one of the better two second periods that I’ve spent, but it was cut short when my spine connected with the other tree.
In 1981, if you were thirteen and your dad let you borrow his cassette/radio boombox, you did so every chance you had. This one sat about four feet northeast of where my head lay, and it kills me now that I can’t remember for sure what was playing on it, but I think it was Rush. Probably A Farewell To Kings. I had a good twenty minutes to listen attentively, staring up at that blue sky above the stripped winter trees around the clearing, while my gasps returned to normal breathing. My tailbone occasionally complains at me to this day.
Humm, may I propose a page describing the places you have been to that were PERFECT opening scenes for Romance/Danger/Intrigue; but where nothing took place. (Guest Lodge of a very secluded college, hidden in the depths of New Hampshire where they were not interested in hiring you if you couldn’t ski.) *sigh*
OK my driving and diving lessons in life. Some time in my childhood at the Tybie Beach in Savannah, Ga. I discovered the intriguing game of diving under water and coming up with something from the bottom. On the third or fourth try at this I suddenly seemed to be stuck half way back, not quite strong enough to reach air. Just as my efforts were getting frantic it occurred to me to LET GO OF THE ROCK.
There is an exit ramp on the south side of Cincinnati Ohio that I took too fast because Mother said she wouldn’t give me the bad news till I was safe at home in Portsmouth. I really don’t know how I managed to overcome the centrifical force. Oh and the bad news was about my Father’s funneral so I had to drive right back to Cincinnati that same night.
Hmm… it depends on how you look at it. When I was young, I loved to walk along a brick wall at the zoo. One side was a relatively sane 4 foot drop, the other side was probably 20 feet. Both to nicely bricked plazas. Bus I was young, and didn’t find it the least bit scary, although when I look at that wall now, I realize just how badly I might have gotten hurt.
One of the craziest things I’ve done was move from Texas to California for a job. I drove out there solo, got to Oakland on Friday night and the job started Monday. I figured I’d take the weekend and find an apartment to rent. Well, the one slight thing I hadn’t considered was that this was right after Silicone Valley started heating up, and apartments were both sky-high for rent and hard to come by. I grabbed a hotel for the first night, then decided to move the next day (for some reason, having the receptionists behind bullet-proof glass just doesn’t give a good impression to guests), did manage to find an apartment that was going to be available in two weeks, and somehow managed to juggle things until then. I have since learned the two magic words: corporate housing. But mostly I just blithely assume that my moves are going to work out.
And one of the creepiest things I have been involved in is when I started a mass hysteria. My Girl Scout troop was doing a winter camp-out at a spot called Swiss Chalet (if I recall rightly… it’s been a long time). This was essentially a long narrow building built slightly cantilevered off the side of the hill, with windows on both sides. There was a firepit and picnic tables at the bottom of the hill, and a latrine off to the side a short distance down the path. I came in from outside towards evening and swore I saw a face in the window. The window that was a good 10 feet off the ground on that side… much too high for someone standing outside to see in. I asked someone else if they’d seen it, they asked for details, we went outside to see if there were any logical explanation, and couldn’t come up with any. Well, things just started spiraling at that point… girls wouldn’t go to the latrine in groups smaller than 6, getting us to go down to the firepit for s’mores was impossible unless everyone went, etc. And the strangest thing was that no one (including me) really could say what had us spooked. But just thinking about it now has the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Now, I’ll admit that this was a group of pre-teen girls, in a mood to be scared. At some point in the normal scheme of things we would have been gasping in frightened delight at tales of The Hook and “it’s coming from inside the house!” And it’s possible that some of the girls were just pretending to be frightened at first. But by the end of the weekend (we were only there that long), we actually _believed_ that there was something to be frightened of. And probably the scariest thing was that the adults couldn’t seem to find a way to counteract it. I have to say, it has made me much less scornful of the witch-hunts in the past, and a little bit more scared about future ones. If an adult had given us a target and said “that’s the cause of what’s scared you”, I don’t know what we would have done. Mobs are scary, and we were on the brink of being one. I’m not entirely sure what I have learned from this experience, besides to try and stay calm in stressful situations, and to be wary of groups of people who are out of control. And possibly the worth of clever lies. If one of the leaders had come up with some sort of “ancient ritual” that would repel evil, we might have come out it. The difficulty is that religion wouldn’t have worked, because we were different faiths, so not everyone would have believed in the “cure”. And it’s a lot easier to universally believe in something bad than it is in something good.
Well, I’m going to say that this thread has really made my night. Morning. It’s 1:30 AM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as I type this.
So I’m thinking really hard, and I’ve got a good one, but you might not appreciate it unless you’ve ridden a motorcycle long distance. Really, any time you’re on a street bike you’re a stone’s throw from Styx, but this time I was closer than usual:
I was coming back to Pennsylvania from Lynchburg, VA, on Rt. 81 on a Triumph TT600. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_TT600 ) I was in a bad mood for girl-related reasons, and that kind of mood never improves my driving. Needless to say, I wasn’t really paying attention to the road.
So. I was going through Hagerstown, MD at eighty or eighty-five miles per hour in a sixty-five, not really flying but passing the faster cars a bit at a time. And then I passed a cop.
Two seconds, three seconds. (I thought, screw this. I’m not stopping.) Four seconds, five seconds. He hit his lights, I dropped three gears, and we were off.
I really don’t know how fast I topped out at. I stopped watching at one-forty-five because I started to get tunnel vision and I couldn’t watch my speedometer and control my bike at the same time. I’m also not sure where exactly I lost him. I passed all of the Hagerstown exits in about thirty seconds, hit the first exit after the city, pulled three rights and a left and parked behind the dumpster at a Burger King.
And then I thought, ‘What the hell did I just do?’ And I started shaking. And I’m pretty sure the chick at the Burger King counter thought I was having a seizure or a heart attack from the looks she kept giving me.
But yeah. That was scary. I’m still alive. I guess it qualifies. =]
how nice, an English bike! congrats on staying alive
I certainly have not had any near death experiences to match any of these …..
Wow…you are lucky. But…gawrsh, I hate to say it…that must have been a serious thrill, too!
@Derek — pretty lucky outcome in more ways than one. Hope you didn’t tempt your luck and have a Whopper with cheese.
Hah, thanks! I love my Triumph. Recently I promised my mom that I wouldn’t go more than ten miles per hour over the speed limit… It’s irritating, because you wind through first and second gear and you’re at seventy-five… and that’s the fastest my conscience will let me go anywhere on the east coast. It’s a lot safer, but… *sigh.
And I’m proud to say I’ve never had a Whopper. I had a chicken sandwich and fries. =]
@derick — you should go to the racetrack and have some safe fun (and build up your skills)
Nice idea about a race track. I had a friend who raced GP and sidecar bikes–he was the monkey. (He notationally rode in the side car, but in practice hung out every which way to increase the bike’s stability.) He never got hurt on the track. But he’d come in once a year walking like a zombie from dumping his bike on the street.
“There are those who have and those who will.” I long ago decided I didn’t have the intensity of attention needed to safely ride. I don’t fly retractable gear aircraft either.
My husband can truthfully say “Been there and Done that” with a gear-up. It was in our nice little Mooney. I think he’s still got the bent prop in the attic. It was truly a very smooth landing with an extremely short run-out. The crank-shaft got bent as well, unfortunately.
That landing was probably somewhat noisier than usual too, right, Tulrose?
That’s where the old aviation joke comes from:
(Q) How do you know you’ve just made a wheels-up landing?
(A) It takes full power to taxi.
#
About my only “stupidest thing I survived” adventure was when I was about 10. A friend and I had just seen a Western in which The Hero was saved from a lynching by his sidekick shooting the rope at the critical moment. So we ran outside, climbed ten feet up a tree, tied lengths of rope around our necks, and took turns jumping out of the tree while the other shot the rope with his BB gun. Repeatedly. Fairly spooky in retrospect, it took me a couple years to realize how lucky we’d been that the tail end of the rope hadn’t snagged on a limb mid-jump.
Yeesh.
In somewhat later years I worked in the family fluorite mine, and was the envy of my teenage friends since I got to handle and use dynamite, blasting caps, etc. Then I joined the Navy–landing jets on aircraft carriers seemed pretty safe!
😀
Jeff
Yup, it was. Most embarrassing for all concerned … we were on the main active runway at the time and not on the shorter one usually reserved for general aviation. At least it was at home and not somewhere else.
Jeff: Did you see the documentary “Carrier” filmed on the Nimitz? Talk about scary … night landings in very high seas with a fair number having to be refueled before they got down. I just about chewed my nails off watching the last one come in.
PBS now offers a fair amount of streaming video. Carrier can be streamed here:
http://video.pbs.org/program/1120934036/