Most esoteric thing you have ever done (I handled a moon rock)..

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

My autograph is right next to Shaquille O’Neal’s in numerous (at least a dozen) basketball programs. After the 1989 Dapper Dan high school basketball classic in Pittsburgh, my friend and I went onto the floor and were somehow able to enter the locker room with the players. I was in my first year of college, so I was almost the same age as the players. Anyway, they also let in some younger fans to get autographs from the players. I was standing next to Shaq, Bobby Hurley and Jerry Walker as they were signing the programs. Shaq was the last one to sign and then he would just hand me the program to hand back to the kid. For some reason, the first kid thought I was one of the players and wanted me to sign. I’m only 5’ 10", but I guess he couldn’t tell. After that, all the other kids assumed the same thing. So I kept signing them.

I also managed to steal Dick Vitale’s personal notes from the game. He left them on the announcer’s table. They were little notes on each of the kids playing the game, so I’m pretty sure he was done with them.

62

I set up a Chess Scholarship at my School.

63

I’ve gone swimming in Loch Lomond (slippery rocks, long story).

I’ve chased dogs out of my yard while wielding an oosik.

I’ve gotten drunk with the President of Sauza tequila, from a bottle of his private stash, while listening to a very bad surf band on the beach at Todos Santos.

64

I’ve played football at the Rose Bowl.

65

I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons with Gary Gygax at an early gaming convention. It was a lot of fun. I think I was 14 or 15 at the time.

66

I’ve made superconductors, chilled them with liquid helium, and used high-power electromagnets to perform experiments on them.

I’ve stood on the north polar ice cap, dressed in jeans, t-shirt, and boots. (Fairly esoteric for a southern boy.)

I’ve picked a lock while hanging upside down from a cargo net.

Please tell me that at some point you climbed up a ladder or something so that you could be “elevated background radiation”. :smiley:

67

Actually, we caught one of these: a Blue Duiker.

The researchers I was visiting were tracking forest antelope using radio collars. When they had to replace a battery, a couple of their Bantu assistants would locate the animals using an antenna. Then a team of pygmies would race out into the forest to surround it with nets and drive it into them.

68

I nearly got hit by Concorde. Kind of.

69

This is a turning into a really cool thread.

70

I just remembered another one. When I was about 9, a good friend’s dad was a geology professor in Washington state. He got a call one day from a farmer who’d turned up mammoth bones in his wheatfield (not all that rare an occurrence), so my friend I got to go spend a day helping to excavate the mammoth. The bones had been too near the surface, unfortunately, and were very crumbly, but they were also very large.

Another time he took us fossil-hunting and we found a fossilized seahorse. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to keep it.

71

While in college, I was a bellringer at the Old North Church in Boston, ringing the same bells that Paul Revere had, about two hundred years earlier. It was because he was a bellringer that he was familiar with and had access to the steeple.

72

My boss and I flew to Houston to bring home a moon rock (encased in a lucite pyramid) for temporary display in the museum where we work. Most mornings I got it out of the safe and put it in the display case, and returned it to the safe at the end of the day.

Here I am underneath space shuttle Discovery in the orbiter processing facility at KSC, shortly before its first flight after the Columbia accident.

I’m quoted in a book, and appear in the index just before Newt Gingrich and Al Gore

73

Launched (simulated) nuclear missiles from an Ohio class submarine.

Had sex on the exhibit floor of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Smoked pot inside the Biosphere 2

Got drunk with Stephen Stills

Jammed with Mickey Hart

Been personally blessed by the Dali Lama

74

I had nine birdies in the final nine holes to win a frisbee golf championship.

75

I’ve held a beating human heart in my hand. (I spelled the surgeon during open massage and the heart re-started while I was holding it.) The person lived.

76

I also held a human heart, but it was inside the man’s chest (and stopped and on ice). I once felt an unborn baby wink—I was doing a vag exam before mommy went to C-section for face presentation…

77

Okay, I had to go look that up. Good one. I assume that “c-beams” is just a phrase that sounded right, with no correspondent in actual fact?

picunurse, you rock! What a beautiful feeling that must have been!

Let’s see, I just rode my bike through Chinatown in a micro-mini skirt after seeing Flipper play live… what a show that was!

I once played a gig where David LaFlamme (of It’s A Beautiful Day) opened for us.

Oh, and I’ve played “Battleship” with the guy who invented Java. And “Old Maid.” He used to play me, “You Are My Sunshine” on his harmonica. No shit.

78

I found some interesting rocks on my way home from school yesterday.

79

I’ve been privileged to cuddle three of my four grandchildren within an hour of their births. Every doper parent knows the privilege of which I speak.

My sister turned me onto a wonderful song by the Oak Ridge Boys, “Thank God for Kids.” http://youtube.com/watch?v=AHWaTXMKT3s

Granted, touching my grandson isn’t touching a piece of the moon, but to me it’s touching a piece of eternity.

Love, Phil

80

What kind of rocks?! I found some amethyst geodes a few months ago by complete weird coincidence (accident on the freeway opened up a bunch; no one was hurt and I scored some geodes!).

I have a few fossils (that I found myself in the field), but they aren’t very special to anyone but me. Trilobytes on one, and I think the other is some kind of plant. Not sure, though.