Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were 16 and already had met the lady that you ended up marrying?
(“The future Mrs. Mercotan visited me to soothe my fevered brow.”)
We actually started dating when we were 15. Elfbabe did not arrive until we were nearly 27.
And I thought mail service in my area was slow…
<rimshot>
Stork crash?
Not to hijack this truly interesting thread, but it’s probably not that unusual to meet your spouse at 16. Mrs. danalan & I started dating at 16. We’ve been married 25 years this year. I suspect there’s a lot of others out there with similar stories.
That would explain a few things… 
Ditto!
[obligitory movie reference]Ditto? Ditto, you provincial putz??![/obligitory movie reference]
BTW, QTM, when are you going to convince your daughter to come to one of our MAD dopefests? (Y’all are from the south, right? I’ll translate it into southern: "Whal now, ma’am, 'round these here parts, we consider that powerful unsochial-like) 
QTM,
I have another question, being a Doc, you’re the perfect person to answer it . You said that “the rod opened my femoral artery sheath without opening the artery or any other structures”. The femoral artery is located in your thigh, is it not? Yet you note that “The rod then proceeded under the skin and almost, but not quite came back out to the left of my navel”. As I’m reading it, that means that the rod made an almost 90 degree turn (to follow the contours of your posture, sitting in a seat) whilest still inside your body. How on earth did that happen, and did it damage any of the major organs that we all keep in our guts?
In any event, the whole incident is amazing, let me chime in with the others in echoing our gratitude that you didn’t shuffle off this mortal coil at 16, depriving us of the many enlightining posts you’ve made over the years.
Mongo only pawn in game of life.
Hey, hey, I’m only half southern, and it’s not from the Mercotan side!
And on the dopefest front, I lack transportation, sadly, as Qadgop kept the car that is definitely not mine, but I used to be the one who drove it.
You recognize Blazing Saddles quotes off the cuff? Oh, man, you HAVE to come to a dopefest!
As to the ride problem, just email Ginger and I, we’d be priveledged to give you a ride, you know the motto of the MADs; " The more the merrier!" ( actually, the motto of the MADs is “Yea, we met online, what’s it to you, dickhead?” 
)
Are you near an airport? I can supply transportation…
(Last time I landed in a farm field no one got hurt and we could re-use the airplane, but my underwear was very nearly a casualty)
By the way… did Qadgop ever finish his pilot’s license and does Elfbabe fly?
weirddave, no other organs damaged. It’s all about the angle of attack. A fluke injury, I was very lucky. The crash threw me out of the 90 degree posture.
broomstick I never did get licensed. I flew as co-pilot and navigator with my dad for years in the Stearman, but life events (college, med school, residency, parenthood) took more time than I felt I could afford to take more time to get licensed. I flew the Stearman a number of times after Pops Mercotan passed on, but frankly without him, it wasn’t quite the same. While Elfbabe rode in the Stearman, she doesn’t aviate either. (She’s a killer on Monty Python quotes too. We raised her right!)
The stork never crashed. We were well grounded in stork-avoidance procedures, so the stork only showed up when we wanted it to.
I’m glad I read this after my flight to San Antonio this morning!
I’m amazed no one else has said it yet…
“Any landing you can walk away from…”
Well, neither of us really were able to walk away from it.
Well, you tried to, at least. All-in-all, an “E” for effort.
Besides, I never thought that the old adage was literal; I always took it to mean that if you survived (period) it was a good landing.
Great story.
I’m a flight instructor, and this type of accident has happened many times. So much so that the FAA began emphasizing “positive exchange of flight controls” big time a while back. One of the first things I teach students is that there should be no question of who is flying the aircraft. If I want to take over I say, “I have the plane”, or if I’m hurried simply “my plane.”. The other person then replies, “you have the plane” to confirm the exchange of controls.
In planes where communication between occupants is difficult, such as open cockpit aircraft with tandem (front-back) seating, shaking the stick is a traditional way of signalling exchange of flight controls. But as is evidenced from Qadgop’s story, this signal can be missed, misinterpreated, or given falsely through turbulence, etc…
I am also one of the pilots whose combined takeoffs and landings do not add up to an even number. During a flight with an instructor shortly after receiving my Private Pilot’s License, an icy runway forced us into making the choice of skidding the plane…
- Over the cliff at the end of the runway
- Into a row of bulldozers and assorted machinery on the right
- Into a ditch on the left.
We got some carbuerator ice during our approach to the airport, which caused us to quickly choose the nearest runway. Unfortunately, it was only 1500 feet and covered with ice. We landed the plane fine, but the ice wouldn’t allow us to stop. We just skidded endlessly, realized too late we weren’t going to stop, and had too little speed to take off again. The instructor chose option #3 by finally stomping on the left rudder pedal. We hit the ditch, bounded up into the air again and came down on the nose at about a 60 degree angle. I saw the prop hit the ground and stop, and the nose gear strut punch through the firewall and into the instrument panel.
Suddenly, we were hanging in our straps and it was all quiet. We looked at each other and saw that we weren’t injured. I broke the silence with one word: “Shit.”
We walked back to the hangar to find the a student pilot waiting for his lesson. When he saw us carrying our flight bags off the runway he called out to us, “This not a good sign. Didn’t you guys leave with an airplane?!”
Oh, man, that brings back memories –
During my hayfield incident, bumping and thumping over the ground in a C150, I hit a ridge that was not visible from the air and was thrown back up, oh, I don’t know, probably 10 feet, maybe 20 but it sure felt like 50. I was way below flying speed, of course, so it was Instant Stall and, as designed, the nose started to drop. I shoved the throttle forward (this was Precautionary Landing With Power) hoping to get enough power to raise the nose. Never mind flying, I just wanted to get the nose UP so I wouldn’t hit nose first. I did land on the mains, barely - if I hadn’t had power I surely wound have gone over into a somersault. Bless those steel spring landing struts, I heard an honest-to-goodness >!BOING!< when I hit the ground.
Man, I love C150’s - take a beating and keep on going…
Mind you, this is in no way a recommendation to land any airplane on any field, or to leave the engine running or not - you’re mileage may vary. I did what I thought best under the circumstances and lived to tell about it. Use your best judgement, fly safe, have fun.
Oh My Doc Q!
I keep telling hubby “landings must equal takeoffs” He just smiles. He thinks he can fly because he’s gotten to help calibrate the big Boeing simulators.
Tell him. Tell him now! He can’t fly!
(of course, when I jumped off the garage roof at age 6 I could… but that’s different.)
Nonesense. ANYONE can fly - it’s landing that’s the difficult bit.
A good landing is one you can walk away from.
An excellent landing is when you can re-use the airplane.
I just know there’s a joke in there somewhere, some reference to “some days you sow the oats, some days the oats…” but I just can’t find the punchline.
Qadgop, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s not that uncommon for someone with a major, major injury like a snapped femur, for instance, nonetheless focusing more on a relativley minor injury, like a severely bitten tongue?