What I mean by the title, is situations in which you came fearfully close to disaster–physical injury, disgrace, financial loss…
For example, I used to do shopping for a semi-invalid customer. She gave me a shopping list, a sheaf of coupons, and cash, and sent me to a supermarket. No big deal, except one time I realized I didn’t have any of the stuff with me–especially the money! :eek: I went to ask at the service counter, but I also went back down an aisle I had walked down before–and there, lying on a shelf, was the money, along with the coupons and list! I never told the customer about this–that her cash lay out in the open where anybody could have seen it and taken it.
Post here an example of a disaster that almost happened.
Back in grad school I was a crazy mountain bike rider. I enjoyed trials-style riding, which among other things included hopping up onto (or down from) various tall objects, and regularly riding down flights of stairs. My bicycle took a beating: six months after I bought it I had to replace a bent fork, and six months after that, I snapped a crank spindle with a hard landing from one of the aforementioned hops down from a tall object. When I replaced the broken crank spindle, I also bought a suspension fork, a fairly rare think in the mid 1990’s. I continued to beat the hell out of my bike, but it took the abuse admirably.
One day a few years after that, I was puttering around near a building downtown, getting ready to ride down a flight of maybe a dozen steps, followed in quick succession by a series of jumps off of sets of maybe 3-4 steps. Just riding lazy circles and figure-eights at the top of the stairs while I caught my breath from the previous sprint, I pulled the front brake lever and heard a “TINK” sound. I dismounted and discovered that this was the sound of one of my suspension fork’s stanchions snapping off at the top. Yes, my front wheel was now attached to the rest of the bike by a single stanchion. I was seconds away from lofting myself down the big flight of stairs; it’s a fair bet the remaining stanchion would have snapped and liberated the front wheel before I got to the bottom, and if it hadn’t, I’m absolutely certain it would have snapped during the subsequent jumps. The result would have been a violent high-speed faceplant onto hard concrete. I had a helmet on, but that probably wouldn’t have saved my face.
So yeah, it was pure luck that my fork broke right before my bike leap instead of during it. Seriously, seconds away from painful, disfiguring disaster.
I bought a motorcycle about 14 years ago, and my bicycle has been gathering dust ever since. I now have about 160,000 miles of touring experience, all crash-free. I’ll claim partial credit for being hypervigilant about threats to my safety, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there was at least a litlte bit of luck involved:
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I’ve never hit a deer, but I’ve had some close calls. Several of my friends have hit deer.
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At least a couple of times I screwed up all by myself and ran wide on tight turns; it was just plain luck that there was a wide paved shoulder for one of those incidents (ran wide to the right), and the other time there was no oncoming traffic (ran wide to the left).
-I’ve ridden through horrible thunderstorms (when I really should have sought shelter), and been fortunate not to have been struck by lightning.
-I once had someone next to me try to change lanes into me; I hit the horn, and found that it wasn’t working (i.e. no sound). It was pure luck that they finally saw me at that moment and retreated (though I probably would have hit the brakes to save myself if they had continued their approach any further).
In a professional near-disaster, I once foolishly posted proprietary-and-confidential information on the internet. A colleague noticed before my boss did and convinced me that it was really not a good idea; I was able to remove the info before anything awful happened; there’s a good chance I would have lost my job if I hadn’t.
Definitely a near miss:
On the island of Guadeloupe, the western half of the island is basically a big national park with volcanoes. I approached the Visitor Center to use the restroom, but the entrance was blocked by two buses. I figured I’ll just pull over onto the shoulder (weeds and low bushes) and walk in. Then I discovered that the shoulder wasn’t as level as I had assumed. It curved down, then a drop god-knows-how-far-down. As I crept along, the car was rolling to the right, about to go over the cliff. I finally stopped as the car was literally teetering. There was no way for me to get out of the car without upsetting the equilibrium before being free of it. I figured, if I’m going over, no one will come looking for me (I was traveling alone), so I’ve gotta make sure someone sees what’s happening. So I started beeping the horn. All of a sudden, all these French guys appeared, from out of the buses. They steadied the car, helped me get out, and hailed a truck that towed the car back onto the road.
I no longer had to use the restroom.
In middle school I was playing intramural soccer before school one or two mornings a week. This particular morning we came out to the field and one of the portable soccer goals was lying “face” down on the ground. The gym teacher got five or six kids to upright it. For some reason I was chosen to play goalie. Part way through the game the goal blew/fell over again and the crossbar just glanced off the top of my head. I ended up needing a couple of stitches but if I had been standing half a step forward I could have easily ended up paralyzed or dead.
I was knocked on to my back off of a motorcycle during a robbery, and I broke three vertebrae. Apparently they were not important vertebrae, because I had no long-term damage. The day after it happened, though, I could not walk, and there was no modern medical care in the area. It took more than a painful and frustrating week to get X rays and to know how badly I was hurt, and in that time I was told a lot of scary things about my prospects- I had no idea if I was going to be permanently disabled, face a lifetime of back pain and surgery, or what. I was just weeks away from a new job in another country, and I was fairly certain I would not be able to do it. Alls well that ends well, but it was a scary time.
For years after, I would wake up in a cold sweat, in sheer terror at the thought of how if I had fallen just a tiny bit differently I would have easily been paralyzed. And if I had decided not to wear my helmet, I would not have survived.
I was walking along the beach in Costa Rica about 9 years ago, in a fairly rock area. I got to a place where I couldn’t go farther, because of a gap in the rocks ( that had deep turbulent water), so I sat down to think about whether I would turn back, or what. I had lost a sandal, so I was afraid to walk back over the sharp volcanic rocks, and the water was too rough for swimming. As I sat and thought, the tide came in, and I had to start climbing the fairly sheer rock face behind me. The tide came in so fast that I almost got pulled off the cliff several times…in fact, I suddenly learned how to climb a cliff while facing outward. ROFL
After sitting halfway up the cliff all night, I was nearly falling asleep from exhaustion. If I had fallen asleep, I would have fallen into the rushing water and almost certainly been killed. Fortunately, the moon came up, and helped keep me awake until dawn.
When the tide receded, I climbed down and decided to go up another, higher, easier-to-climb rock face a few feet away, to ponder my situation a little more. Unfortunately, the waves ALSO found that particular spot to be easier to climb, and I spent over 2 hours in am unclimbable spot, being nearly dragged off the rocks into the ocean by waves. I really thought I was going to die with some of the bigger waves. I could see the really big ones coming for about 30 seconds or more, from being swells in the ocean to coming up the rocks and grabbing me.
When low tide came again I decided to just deal with the volcanic rocks and walked back across them. Luckily they weren’t sharp enough to cut my foot, although they looked it.
When I was about 19 I was in a car wreck. If I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt I wouldn’t be here telling you about it.
My husband and I and one of his friends, Chris, went on a hiking/touring (with skis) day trip upMt. Sparrowhawk. I wasn’t very good on skins (fabric you put on the bottom of skis to ski up the mountain - they prevent you from sliding backwards) and on one of the short downhills I fell and somehow really hurt my right quad muscle. We were almost to the peak, so I told them to carry on and I’d start to slowly make my way down. I had injured myself much worse then I thought, and could hardly stand on that leg. The snow was a few feet deep, so any time I fell, I had a hell of a time getting back up. After about an hour of struggle, they finally made it back to where I was and it was decided that one of them would piggy back me and the other would carry my skis and bag.
So I’m on Chris’ back and we end up in this avalanche col (path) with sheer rock on each side. To late to turn around, plus I’m injured, so we keep going forward. We eventually come to this ~15 foot ice waterfall that we have no choice but to try and climb down. Chris goes first and makes it easily. I’m next, and I somehow slip (ski boots are really slippery) and go head first and backwards off of the cliff. Somehow, miracle of miracles, I land on a perfect decline and have a nice, smooth landing. Once my husband is down, we carry on, with me on Chris’ back. He’s flying along at a decent pace (still in this avy col with rock face on each side) and he falls. We’re getting up to get going again and my husband skis ahead of us just a few meters and sees that there is a 50+ foot cliff right there. We just about went over it, and were lucky we happened to fall when we did. We had to climb up the rock face (no ropes) to get out of there.
We finally make it to the tree line and can hike the rest of the way down. Took us about eight hours to get out of there.
Another part of this story is we had our dog, a Husky, with us. She got lost on the mountain with all of this going on. We drove Chris back in to the city and the husband and I drove back out and slept in the car at the base of the mountain. At first light he went back up to look for her. He found her about half way up and could see she had been running around chasing rabbits all night, probably having the time of her life! She slept for about a day! I went to the doctor and has a partially torn quad muscle that took a few months to rehabilitate.
I used to work just off of Wall Street in Manhattan. I’d take the PATH train in from NJ, getting off at the World Trade Center stop, take the big escalator to street level, and walk about 10 minutes to my building, arriving around 9:00 am.
I had been there a few years and saw the writing on the wall; my industry was struggling. As a pre-emptive move, I looked for a job in a related industry, and got an offer from a company based in NJ, so I wouldn’t have to come into the city anymore. Sweet.
I gave my 2 week notice on Friday, August 24, 2001. My last day was Friday, September 7. A few days later, the building I would have been riding a train into the basement of collapsed. You may have read about it.
When I was about 20, I drove a real old, high-mileage car. One summer I had a new engine put in. I drove it to and from work (half-hour commute) for a few days.
Then, one day I came home, stopped at the end of our driveway to get the mail and open the gate, and drove in. Suddenly, the car dropped, and slid to a low-speed stop. I got out to see what had happened. Basically, the right front wheel had completely disconnected from the A-frame and flopped 90 degrees, leaving me on three wheels. That corner of the car had dropped and gouged a divot where the frame of the car had dragged through the dirt. There was no bolt anywhere to be found; if I had to guess, I’d say that the garage that replaced my engine had taken the bolt out at some point and forgot to put it back in, leaving me driving a time bomb. I was very fortunate that it had come apart at low speed in our driveway; if it had happened at highway speed, I would have very likely flipped and gone airborne.
-I was driving to work about 7:30 one morning on a rural 2-lane road. The temperature was in the mid 30’s (just above freezing), and the roads were a little wet. As I drove through a low straight section of road I hit black ice and my car turned 90 degrees, I was going down the road sideways. I locked up the brakes and rode it out, saw the side of the road and the ditch getting closer and closer. Luckily I stopped with my front tires right on the edge of the road, and no cars were in front of or behind me.
-We were tearing the roof off an old carport and throwing the the old plywood, full of nails, into the back of a pickup truck. I wanted to get down for something but instead of going down the ladder I decided to jump the 5 or 6 feet down into the back of the truck. Right after I jumped it occurred to me that there were old rusty roofing nails sticking up all over that piece of plywood I was about to land on. Somehow even though the nails were spaced a foot or two apart everywhere, I didn’t land on any. My dad was on the roof with his mouth open, he figured I had rusty nails through my feet.
Driving (well actually in the backseat as my Dad drove) on I-80 north around the Quad Cities, we hit a patch of ice on a bridge and spun at least 7 times (we had fairly good evidence for the number as other motorists who stopped as well as the Highway patrol officer who went to check on the bridge could retrace all of the spins) in a full circle repeatedly hitting guard rails on both sides. Knowing my dad, we had been driving 85-90 mph- he regained control before the ice ended and pulled the car over to the side of the road. We lost a headlight, front corners of the car, most of the trunk, and only one door would open as the others had been bent inward by guardrail or cable impacts. We drove to the next exit, found a service station, checked out the car, talked to the highway patrol, saw the salt truck salting the bridge, and then drove the 400 miles home. The car ended up being totaled but with no injuries, a driveable car after the accident, and the ability to recover from such a spin, my dad refuses to buy anything not a BMW to this day.
I was sledding down a hill at night with some friends. I was stupid, it was college. Fortunately, I managed to hit the tree my sled was aiming for with my thigh instead of my face. I was probably going at about 30 mph. I don’t like to think what could have happened if I hadn’t fallen back at the exact right moment.
Twice I was saved by someone paying attention in the back seat.
Coming back from the high school play we put on. I was doing the sound. We had a car full of the cast and musicians. Approaching a ungated train crossing that I had never seen a train go through my entire life, the back seat passenger yelled “Stop!” and the driver was able to stop just in time to avoid getting hit by the train. I was the front seat passenger.
When I was training for my old active duty job down in Fort Rucker we were flying at night in the training area. My fellow student was in the back of the OH-58 and I was in the front left. We were flying with NVGs. As I was looking down to change a radio frequency the guy in the back yells out “Aircraft 10 o’clock!” The Instructor Pilot quickly reacted and dumped collective. A civilian fixed wing flew right through where we were going to be. He was in restricted airspace and was totally blacked out at night. Heading right for the Gulf. My IP figured he was probably a drug runner. We will never know but it was a close call.
While climbing a cliff just below the summit of Mt. Blanca in Colorado a storm moved in and covered the wall with ice. I was by myself, it was late and getting dark and I couldn’t hardly move. Somehow 2 hours later I managed to get down, frozen to the bone. Had I fallen and not died immediately, my partner probably wouldn’t have found me or been able to get help for close to a day. It would have been life altering, if not ending.
Back when I was in college, we went skiing one weekend. The first night up there we went to a kegger, then left at midnight to see the mountain we’d be skiing the next day (and maybe make some mischief). We found a lift running, and thought it would be a good idea to ride up to the top of the hill and back down again. About halfway up, I sobered up enough to realize that if, for some reason, the lift stopped running, we’d be in a LOT of trouble. Middle of the night, drunk, exposed to the elements in northern Maine in January. When we finally arrived at the top, we all jumped off the lift and proceeded to WALK down the mountain. When I think back to that night all I can really do is shake my head in disbelief.
My first wedding, 1986. I am in a long white dress complete with train and a hat of satin and lace. It is the middle of the reception and I step out on the covered porch in the back of the venue for a breather. It is pouring rain. I turn, take five steps to walk back indoors and the gutter comes down splashing a good gallon of water exactly where I was standing not five seconds before. I would have been a wet soggy bride from head to toe. I’ve had a few near misses with car accidents but that is the near miss I will never forget.
I was on a school hike one weekend, sweeping a ridgeline to make sure the hike-groups of kids didn’t overshoot their checkpoint.
It was a windy day and I was standing in a group of gum trees when I heard a cracking sound. As soon as I heard it I took off running for an open area. Gum trees have a habit of dropping branches.
Most of the limb missed me, just the smaller outer branches & leaves brushed against my daypack.
I was headed to Los Angeles for a job. There were two flights from two airlines that departed about the same time, both due to arrive in Los Angeles about the same time. Either flight would have fit my schedule. By chance, I did not fly on this flight.
My Easter Miracle… Hiking in the Yuha Desert – near Ocotillo – known for the “Yuha Petroglyphs.” My car keys fell out of my pocket. My party all split up and started re-tracing our path…and found 'em.
I also saved my sister from falling to her death, when she got too far out and down a slippery slope of granite over a cliff. I got around to her and nabbed her by the ankle, and hauled her back to safety.
(Nobody can tell me that the “slippery slope” is a fallacy!) 