Fall Down, Go Boom.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Vail Colorado

I am going like a bat out of hell down a slope and miss that I am flying toward a double black diamond . I see a line of people standing at what I think is a gradual hill. I see a opening and shoot through, into space… Turns out they were standing on a cliff going down a chute. I was told that I flew nearly 15 feet striaght out and fell about 25. Lucky for me I landed in some ultra soft powder and rolled nearly 30 feet finally coming up standing! but completely blanketed in white. I bent both poles, lost my hat, sunglasses, a wineskin, a camera (found glasses and hat but lost everything else)

I was completely loopy but did not break anything. Turned out everyone who saw me was completely shocked I did not kill myself. Got a huge round of applause and had a load of fun with the people who witnessed it for the rest of the trip. My nickname that trip…ballsout from a aussie guy who saw me fly off going balls out.

22

Ok, I’m basically a walking accident, so, I have a few spectacular ones.

My favourite happened in HS.

Picture this:

I’m walking down the hallway, same as any other day.

Same as any other day I pass through the large open area between the library and music room.

Next thing I know, I’m approximately horizontal, about three feet off the ground, and moving rather quickly towards the floor.

About half a dozen people rush over, help me to my feet and ask if I’m hurt. I’m fine, nothing’s broken, I never even got the wind knocked out of me.

Then I break down laughing. It was just so funny.

‘They couldn’t hit an Elephant from this dist…!’

Last words of General John Sedgwick

23

Story #1) Canada. Winter. Very icy. I was crossing the road when I felt my feet slip out from under me. I jumped with the last bit of balance I had left. When I landed one foot slipped so I bounced to the other one, which slipped so I bounced to the other one, which slipped, etc until I actually got to the other side of the street which had been salted and recovered my balance. My friend (see Story #2) exclaimed after seeing this “Where exactly do you keep that horseshoe?”

Story #2) Canada. Late Winter/Early Spring. Not very icy at all, but a few patches around. My friend who spots me comes running over to execute a Jean Claude Van Damme running jump kick (kind of a “running” gag for us … kind of complicated to explain). Anyway, when he gets close and prepares his kick I use the deadly two finger “gun” O’ Doom. Amusingly enough he hits a patch of ice and slips just as I “shot” him. The timing was incredibly perfect. We must have laughed about that one all day.

Story #3) When I went to university I was well known for wearing chinese slippers/sandals. One time I had to go to another building and silly me didn’t bother to switch out of the sandals (which have no grip). Well, I run out onto the icy courtyard and notice that I am not making it very far, the sandals simply wouldn’t catch on the ice. I tried to slow down, but trying to change direction was a definite no-no. According to witnesses I must have flipped a few feet into the air. Even with a break fall that one was painful.

It’s bernard, just under new management

24

Satan I thought that you would always be red faced.

Scoobysnax

Save water drink beer!

25

Anybody who has ever been to Amsterdam knows he have trams (streetcars). As we know, trams drive on rails.

Picture one friday night in late 1997. Although it’s autumn, the streets are packed with people ready to have a good time - and you CAN in Amsterdam :wink:
I’m on my bike heading for the town centre, late as it is for an evening of downing beers with a good friend of mine. A social venue that I appreciate very much - so I’m speeding like hell on my crappy old bike to get to the designated bar in time. One girl, casually pedaling in front of me, isn’t quite so hasty. So I pass her with a brilliant sweep, at a speed that in hindsight must have been over 30 kilometers per hour - pretty damn fast on a regular bike, I’ll tell you that…
Just as I pass the girl, I notice them. Glinstering in the poor light I spot the tramrails, just as my front wheel gets caught in one. I try and jerk the handle bars to escape the Impending Doom, but to no avail. I crash down on my right side - the impact is HARD. I’m bruised all over, and have quite some trouble getting to my feet. Although a lot of people stop and watch (mind you, at this spot at least 300 people where able to see me crash), nobody even walks into my direction to aid me in some way. I get up however, and carry on cycling like nothing happenened. What else can you do ?
My friend who I met later had the ultimate coolness-saving action to take when just crashed: step up to the nearest bystander and ask them if this is the so-and-so street ?
Cracked me up that one, bruises and all… had to drink with my left hand all night, which isn’t too bad if you’re NOT a heavy smoker…

All injuries faded with time though, all that’s left is the anecdote.

Watch them tramrails though… they’re ballbreakers.

Coldfire

“You know how complex women are”

  • Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
26

When I was in the Navy, stationed on Guam, I had a small motorcycle. The roads there were paved with crushed coral, not asphalt, which is fine when it is dry, but develops a slimy surface when wet that is slick as ice. I was approaching a stop sign while it was raining, and not having developed any real skills on a motorcycle yet, locked up the rear brake. The bike flipped out from under me, leaving me on my hands and kness, sliding forward at about 30 mph and heading straight for the stopped cars in front of me. I slid for about 50 ft., and stopped just short of the last car in line. I was expecting to see the palms of my hands and my knees torn to shreds, but was amazed to see only a few minor scratches (it was that slick). Now I have to scramble out of the way to avoid being hit by the cars behind me bearing down, their wheels sliding on the slick surface! Luckily, I and the bike came away unscathed. I wonder if they ever came up with a better road surface material there?

Gary

27

I was on a ski trip to Vermont, with a bus full of people from my high school. A friend and I had just gotten on the long, slow lift to the summit of the mountain, when we heard the PA system announce that our bus would be leaving in ten minutes. By the time we got off the lift, that time had already passed, and we were nervous that the bus would leave before we got to it.

Of course we skied down toward the base lodge as quickly as we could. My friend kept his speed at a reasonable level, but I was a fearless (read “stupid”) kid, so I went flat out and soon left him behind.

I was fine until another trail merged into ours, and some large woman swept out into my path on unsteady skis. I avoided her without too much trouble, but for a moment I hadn’t been able to see the trail below me; therefore the large chunk of ice took me by surprise.

Very fortunately, I didn’t get my tips stuck and kill myself. Instead, I somehow hit the thing like a ramp. Since I wasn’t prepared for it, I completely lost my presence of mind when it flung me into the air.

My friend later said he thought I was doing a stunt, because it looked like a perfectly executed backward flip. The only problem was that it continued through about 450°. I landed flat on my back, cracked one of my ribs, and lay very still while I tried to figure out what had just happened.

(The good news: I didn’t end up dead, I didn’t miss the bus, and everyone had a good time looking at my X-Rays on the way home. :D)

Of course I don’t fit in; I’m part of a better puzzle.

28

I’ve told this before, so if you’ve heard it, just stop me.

For Father’s Day this year my kids got me a pair of roller blades (they’re after the insurance money). After a short but successful warmup in the driveway, we went skating. I gained confidence, and we ended up in a nearby parking lot. I decided I was good enough to tackle a downhill slope (aw, Mom, all the other kids are doing it). About halfway down the hill I realized three things simultaneously:

  1. At this speed I cannot stop;
  2. I can lean a little, but cannot turn; and
  3. There is a big dropoff at the end of the parking lot.
    Since I had on knee pads, wrist pads, and helmet I decided to “lay it down” as opposed to taking on whatever was at the bottom of the dropoff. I went down hard, aiming at my padded parts. I hit one, but it was my butt. Tore the seat out of a nice pair of shorts and lost most of the skin on my right calf. The scar is beautiful. The pads were unscathed. I lived to be stupid another day.

The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. – E. Grebenik

29

I haven’t fallen down lately, but early this summer my boyfriend did. He and some people he worked with were going to lunch, and an attractive woman passed them on the sidewalk. My pig of a man (I mean that in the nicest way) gaped and stared, ogling as best he could. His head was turned and he was paying attention to the woman and not where he was walking. He tripped, fell, sprained his ankle, and it’s been giving him problems all summer.

I take great joy in giving him all the shit in the world over this one! heheheee!

30

My most embarassing fall happened in J.C. Penny’s. It was raining outside and I didn’t wipe my shoes on the doormat, so I was making these squeak-squeak noises on the linoleum walkways. Being the total dipshit I am, I decided to do a little dance.

I remember what happened next quite clearly. Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak WHAM! I landed right on my back.

And of course this happened on Saturday when the store was full of shoppers. . . when I find that dipshit gene I am getting it removed.
– Sylence

“The problem with reality is the lack of background music.” – Anon

31

When I was about 15 or 16 I was waterskiing and had just let go of the rope. The drill was that we finished up just in front of our cottage and then just walked to the pier. Well, as I was gliding in I realized that I was still moving too fast and would hit the pier. Amazingly, I managed to jump out of the skis and do a perfect barrel roll over the top of the pier. Too bad I didn’t think of the better thing to do (which other waterskiers have probably already thought of), which would have been to just sit down in the water and stop myself before I reached the pier. Good thing my reflexes were working, because my brain sure wasn’t. This episode convinces me that I was never cut out to be an athlete.

32

I am sitting here with tears in my eyes from laughing…Sylence that is desperately funny!

Satan, you should write for a living, I could picture that as if I was standing right there!

33

Ok, I was at Vail, staying at the Westin (which I hear has been bought by some other company now) with my mom. She speaks at some fancy convention there every year, and sometimes lets me come along). So it’s snowy and cold out, and we’ve had a great day skiing (mmmm… gotta love the Vista Bahn) and we decide to go down and sit in the jaccuzi. It’s an outdoor one, and they have a heated pool too… so we’re all sitting in the jaccuzi, with about 10 other people, all strangers, and I decide to go see how warm the pool actually is. Pretty warm, judging by the piles of clouds rising off of it…

Now, it’s in the 20’s or so, being late at night in January in the Colorado mountains, so I don’t want to stay out of the water very long. Thus, I decide to sprint from the jaccuzi to the pool.

Now class, what happens to wet surfaces when it is very very cold?

Yes, the deck was totally icy, which I hadn’t even THOUGHT about, being from Arizona where we don’t have stuff like ice, and I went down HARD right on my ass. Everyone was looking when it happened, too. Man did I feel like a retard.

Now if we’re throwing in bike stuff, I have a few.
Back in Jr High, which isn’t really what we’re discussing in this thread but I’ll throw it in anyway, I was riding my bike to KMart to get my daily Icee. I had to cross a fairly major road to get there, and so when a break in traffic opened up, I hauled ass. I was watching for cars and like a dork, I missed the ramp onto the curb. I hit the curb dead on, and my bike just STOPPED. I flipped over the handlebars and put my hands out to catch myself. The bike followed me over.

So I found myself upside down, with my hands on the ground and the bike over me. Then, just like in some kind of movie or cartoon, we s l o w l y fell over, still in the same frozen position.

It was bad enough just having it happen on a crowded street like that, but then some well-meaning lady STOPPED HER CAR to ask me how I was. Man, I could have just dug a hole and died right there.

In high school, I rode my bike to school for the first 2 years (and drove my car the other 2) and along my path was a convenience store that had a patch of gravel at the corner (it was at an intersection) and on the other side of the parking lot was a gravel driveway to an office building. This made for a lot of gravel in the parking lot.

So here I am riding my bike along, and suddenly this TOTAL MORON of a woman turns RIGHT in front of me. If I’d have been 5 feet further forward, she’d have driven right over my lifeless body, I swear.

I squeeze the brakes with all my strength, you know, so I won’t die or anything… and of course the gravel-over-asphalt skids my bike out from under me and I go spinning across about 15-20 feet on my hands, knees, legs, back, and so on. Gravel is totally embedded in my palms.

I took a minute to go over and yell like hell at the STUPID BITCH and then rode the rest of the 2 miles or so to school, with that sort of numb-but-abraded feeling you get after such things. Once at school, I locked up my bike and went up to the nurse’s office to get some bandaids or something.

Now, the nurse was probably a nice enough person, but that day she was devil spawned. Pure cruelty, it was. She took a BRUSH and proceeded to sand all the rest of the skin and muscle off my palms, incidentally getting out the gravel in the process. Then she stuck a few bandages on and sent me to class. Ow.

Now we come to adulthood. I’m a packrat. Worse than just keeping stuff, I go out and find it. I collect anything that looks cool (screws, nuts, nifty bits of colored plastic, etc) when I see it on the ground… but for a while in my early 20s I was REALLY into it. I had a milk crate bungie-corded onto the book rack on the back… I also had enough bungie cords to attach all kinds of extra big crap found to any other part of my bike. I also collected scrap wood, bars of metal (once I found an 8 foot pipe that I strapped on like a lance for the ride home)

So one day I was really heavily laden down with all kinds of stuff… plywood strapped to the bike, metal, this that the other and more… the bike was REALLY heavy. So I’m pedalling, pretty slowly, down a busy road… and I got to a red light. I stopped and waited for the light… and as I was waiting, totally out of my control to stop…

I tipped over.

EeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeePLONK

From a STOP we fell over. Totally splat. Lots of cars sitting at the light looking at me.

Man was that embarrassing.

>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://opalcat.com
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions

34

I was 13. I was on vacation in the Alps with my parents. They thought it would be cute if I ran down one of the foothills like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. It started out well, but then I tripped, and rolled very un-gracefully down the rest of the hill. Of course, it is forever preserved on video for generations to enjoy.

“I think it would be a great idea” Mohandas Ghandi’s answer when asked what he thought of Western civilization

35

Great thread, OC! I’ve been sniggering all day and have had to go back and read a couple of 'em twice!!

My own experience is mild compared to these. I was walking on a sidewalk in front of the cafeteria at college, wearing sandals that were really slippery on the wet concrete. Like some of the rest of you I converted the impending fall into a little dance step as I tried to regain my balance. The really embarassing part is that I didn’t fall down but I didn’t stand back up either. I couldn’t stop dancing! Every time I almost fell I’d save myself just enough to almost fall again. I suppose it only lasted four or five steps but it seemed like a lifetime since it was a very public place. When I eventually did recover I couldn’t even exit with dignity since I had to kind of shuffle to keep it from happening again.

Oh well. Years of therapy down the drain with this one memory!!

“non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem”
– William of Ockham

36

I was hiking on a bluff and it started to drizzle. This bluff got very slippery when wet due to the clay. Coming down the last 20 feet on a step incline I started to slide. I went the whole distance like I was on a ski board. I missed all the trees and stopped while still standing upright. That was a one in a million event.

37
  1. Going down steps on my way to a semiformal dance. Caught my heel in a crack and splat. Amazingly, my gown wasn’t damaged.
  2. Going down steps in a building. Slipped, grabbed the handrail and scraped my hand.
  3. Sidewalk, winter. Didn’t know better than to walk on the subway grating, which had iced over.
  4. Breaking in new cowboy boot. Exited a store and slipped on very old, slick stone doorsill.
  5. School hallway. Walking past a scuffle among a bunch of guys. Was pushed backwards, fell and scraped elbow on corner of brick wall.
  6. Christmas. Telling funny anecdote. During punchline, stepped back for dramatic effect and fell into tree.

Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green

38

It’s not me with the problem, it’s my wife. She can be so agile and graceful on a dance floor, not losing a step whether it be a country waltz, schottishe or a two-step.

Take away the dance floor and she’ll trip over her own shadow. I’ve seen the woman literally trip and go down with no cause for the fall in sight.

To make matters worse, our son has inherited this bizarre trait, and spends a lot of his time face first in the sandbox or tumbling end over end. Even our dog is clumsy. I’ve stopped counting the number of times he has walked into walls and doors that have always been in the same place for the entire part of his short life.

It’s eerie in the house when all three are cosmically aligned for a brief moment and all you see are dropped dishes, screaming laid-out kid and stupid barking of a semi-conscious dog.

Maybe I once did have a normal family, but they were probably abducted by aliens and replaced with these copies.

“…send lawyers, guns, and money…”

 Warren Zevon
39

When I was a HS freshman, I was chasing my friend Josh for some reason. We were racing all throughout the school, top speed, when for some reason, he makes dead stop and bends over. I don’t have time to react, and slam into him, my momentum carrying me up and over his body, as he crumples to the ground. I fly a good 10 feet through the air, then land on my knees, flop forward, and slide about 5 feet. We both lay on the ground groaning for about 5 minutes, then get up, brush ourselves off, and limp to the busses. My knees were both swollen for a week. Luckily, this was after school, so there were no witnesses.

We never mentioned this to each other. He soon moved away. One day I told my sisters. A few days later, we were at a football game, and they came and got me and were like “Look who’s here!” First words out of his mouth: “That was our little secret…” I guess they were seeing if I had lied to them.

Painful.

–Tim

40

Forgot to mention this was years later when I told them about it. Actually, it was about 2 weeks ago.

–Tim

We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.