Same here.
And before that: trying to live normally while a civil war was going on in my old country.
I flew hang gliders for five years, up to 5,000 feet above launch. Broke my arm in one bad landing, knocked unconscious in another. Other than that, no worries.
Recovering am impounded drug smuggling aircraft from Jamaica.
I may have posted this before.
I was 16. My car needed a new starter. To save money I did it myself.
So I jack the car up using the cheap scissor jack that is standard equipment. No jack stands, just the jack holding the car up.
I’m underneath, trying to loosen a stubborn bolt. I remember the car swaying on that jack as I struggle to get the bold loose.
An older neighbor who happens to be walking by hollers at me to get out from under there. He then fetches some jack stands for me to use.
I cringe every time I think of how stupid that was and how badly it could easily have ended.
mmm
Bungee jumping in Daytona Beach at Spring Break.
In my life, I’ve saved 4 people’s lives (many more than 4 if I count talking people out of pounding the living shit out of others, keeping them from losing their jobs, keeping them from being robbed or defrauded, etc.).
The time my smaller wirey friends were confronting several much larger Lacrosse Frat guys (The Lacrosse Guys had just sexually assaulted two girls we knew in their Rutgers dorm room). Yes I jumped on the biggest one
after they kicked my friend in the balls w/o warning. Yes I got quite a beating, but my friends didn’t.
Thought I had friends for life after I woke up afterwards. FTR- Not one is even on my Facebook now. Only One is on my Linked In.
The time the Drunk Pledge of FIJI, a Frat I was visiting, was pissing off the 3rd floor roof and into their back yard… and weaving badly (when drunks weave, they are about to fall). Tore my jacket crawling through that stairwell window, and I dragged him back from the edge, pulling him back into the house to safety. I was banned from the house afterwards for “laying hands on a brother”. That house is gone now, but that did once happen. :dubious:
The time a drunk New Brunswick police officer pulled his .38 on me and my passengers on a “traffic stop” on Halloween… one that included him fondling the breast of the girl in the passenger seat with the barrel of his gun. I talked him into letting us go on our way. Less than 5 years later, in 1991, that same cop (his pictures were in all the papers) killed an unarmed kid in that town… most probably with the same gun. I guess I’m not a hero there; I’m just glad he didn’t shoot us.
The time I climbed out on ropes 3 stories up at Sesame Place in PA to get and carry out a little boy whose hand had had been cut/crushed by the ropes & was bleeding profusely. My Own kid was traumatized just by the blood.
FTR- Bill Murray was right- Never got a thank you from useless staff or MIA parents.
The time I dived & caught a little boy who fell off the top of a jungle gym at a park near where I live. I’m pretty sure I saved his life. I was about to yell at the person watching him until I saw that they had full-arm crutches.
Look, I don’t live my life expecting any thank-yous. I wasn’t born with that kind of pretty-boy face. I just do what’s right. Shallow A-holes only see what they want to anyhow.
I walked out on a job that was causing me so much stress I was throwing up every morning. I went against everyone’s advice to wait until I found another job, but I could not take it another minute.
I found another job about three weeks later and never regretted it.
Sailing Club in college - I can’t swim.
Nonetheless, as soon as the ice melted, we were out there - no vests, nothing.
In that water, you have use of your hands for 5 minutes - and we never practiced trying to right a capsized boat. You get wet, you die.
I briefly owned the world’s crappiest “mobile home” - easily 30 years old. Come winter, it was time to fire up the furnace. I called out some pro’s who assured me it was a firetrap waiting to happen.
When I said “That’s nice, but there’s no money for a replacement; I’m going to light this one”, they ran - didn’t even want to get paid - “Just let us get out of here before you light it!”.
It worked just fine.
In 1991 I drove across the country. Heading south at night out of Chicago, there was freezing rain - the interstate was lined with semis parked bumper-to-bumper.
I had the road pretty much to myself from West Bend to Louisville - a saw exactly 2 other vehicles - both Highway Patrol.
I was also the only thing moving in the blizzard of '73 (N. IN) - my '65 bug with studded tires all 'round.
Wana hear about driving 24 hours straight?
When I was 17, I climbed up a 100-foot(?) high mesa/plateau.
I then found that just because you can climb *up *something doesn’t mean you can climb *down *it.
I grabbed plants on my way down as handholds and hoped the roots wouldn’t come out; if they had, I might have hurtled down the slope.
Jumped out of a plane four times back in West Texas. With an outfit called the High Plains Drifters that operated out of a small private airport in the town of Muleshoe. Static line. I stopped because another time or two and I’d be expected to freefall. Decided no to press my luck.
When I was accepted to graduate school at the U of Hawaii, I moved to Honolulu from Albuquerque, not knowing anyone there and with no place to stay lined up. It felt like I was moving to Mars.
Then moving back to Thailand from Hawaii with just US$1000 in my pocket. I’d lived in Thailand before and knew my way around Bangkok and so was confident I could make something work before too long. And I was right. (As you can see, when I move, it’s often a quarter- or halfway around the world, not over to the next block or town.)
Going into a dark building after a burglar.
I once got married. Never again.
When I was 9, I climbed out of of a 3rd storey window onto the sill as a dare. It was tiled, about 4" wide, and at least one of the tiles was loose. I realised at about the same time as the friend who dared me how stupid it was, and she grabbed me as I was trying to climb back in, which made me nearly let go…
I’ve also done a fair bit of solo travel, in counties where I knew no-one, with no plans, and sometimes without knowing the local language at all. Thus included hitchhiking and couchsurfing. I never really felt unsafe though, maybe because I grew up on stories my parents had told me from when they did much more crazy stuff.
Of course not. That would be bigamy.
Reposted from a previous thread about running from the po-po’s:
I have a good friend who’s done such a thing on a motorcycle. He was on a flat, straight, deserted tertiary highway at 3AM on a school night, and at wide open throttle - trying to find the bike’s top speed.
225kph indicated, if anyone is interested.
The only car he passed head-on had “POLICE” written between the headlights in reflective decaling. The choice was made to leave the throttle fully open for about 45 seconds, and choose a perpendicular rural side road that he knew would connect to another tertiary highway running parallel to the original one he was on. The intention was to get back to the city he’d started in, his route forming a U-shape. I’d heard that there was an almost unstoppable urge by runners to run home, turns out this has some truth in it. He lost sight of the cruiser shortly after turning onto the perpendicular rural road, and raced through the next tertiary highway heading back to his city.
Immediately after crossing a bridge marking the city limits, he was set upon by three cruisers semi-hidden spots. They probably figured out his path immediately after the first cruiser saw him turn down the perpendicular rural road. Not a lot of options for our freedom-seeker highway wise, and they surmised that the sportbike rider probably wasn’t from the sticks.
Stage two of the run involved 3 separate, small groups of cruisers following, and then being evaded by running stop lights and tripling the speed limits while tearing through the city (still towards home). It was like he was being handed off between groupings of cruisers that could make contact, ascertain direction, and then break off pursuit when something truly dangerous was done by the rider. Only one of the cruisers took any sort of aggresive action with the biker, when a cop tried to squeeze the motorcycle into curbing as the biker was passing the cruiser.
Having arrived home with less than 10 seconds since seeing the most recent cruiser, our freedom-seeker decided parking at his house and hiding under his bed wasn’t the best plan. He decided on a quick blast to the neighbouring town (one last grouping of cruisers was evaded by pointing the bike towards a red light, slamming open the throttle, and our friend closing his eyes and deciding he’d had a good life even if if didn’t last through the intersection) with the intention of hiding for the night. He ended up parking/concealing the bike on a residential road during a momentary respite, and sleeping hidden under a huge pine tree in an apartment complex.
I am honestly terrified of heights. It got to the point of being embarrassing. So, time for a dramatic cure - I went parachute jumping, well one jump.
I remember being sick with anxiety while taking off in the plane and thinking ‘Asshole - you are not landing with this plane! Idiot!’ What were you thinking? Asshole!.
I did jump though. I am still terrified of heights.
I’ve read that a fear of heights usually doesn’t manifest itself in an airplane. Something about it being disconnected from the earth and that you generally have to be standing on something that is connected to the earth such as a tall building or cliff to feel it.
I was on a Russian fishing boat in the Bering Sea. We hit 16 foot seas during a storm. I decided to go out on the bow and watch the waves. Backed up to a large winch and let the knee deep water rush past me as the bow pitched up and down. How I didn’t get washed overboard I’ll never know!
I think you are absolutely correct - without a ‘close to the ground’ frame of reference, it’s not the same.
BUT, when you see that the door of the plane is open, and it’s open for YOU to leave, well, frame or not, it was pretty unnerving.
Reading that instantly made me sweat. I’m generally ok with heights as long as I am on a steady platform. I would quit my job before doing that.