I can think of a few, but I’ll start it off with just one for now.
Tubing. That is, being pulled at speed while lying on an inflated tube attached to a boat with a rope.
I did it several years ago while on vacation in upstate New York. It was incredibly uncomfortable, being bounced around in a jarring manner with no method of communicating to the driver to STFD.
To top it off, I got an abrasion on my elbow where some lake bacteria found ingress to my bloodstream and landed me in a hospital with 6 weeks of IV antibiotics.
They can throw me on a tube and giddyup the boat when I’m dead if they want. Not before.
It sounds like you missed the point of tubing. It’s not supposed to be a gentle or relaxing ride across the lake. And laying on it is the wrong way to do it. You need to be on your knees and grabbing the handles so you can steer the thing. Also, were you not told of the thumbs up for faster and thumbs down for slower? Because that seems to be the standard form of communication.
Anyway, tubing rant over.
I’ll never again do another “drink everything on this list and win a medallion” type challenge at a bar.
I may have posted about this before. I will never agree to paint a large mural on a brick wall again. It was unrelentingly hard . It was last summer. It was hot. And it took forever. I will never do that again.
Sky diving. I did it once on my 30th birthday, and that sufficed. (I fainted when I melted and slid out the door of the plane and didn’t wake up until the parachute opened. I got a poor grade for failing to make an AGGRESSIVE EXIT.) Had there been any problems, I would no longer be alive to make this post. Then I landed flat on my back (they told us not to look at the ground but at the horizon so we wouldn’t lock our knees) and got drug for several hundred feet through the desert brush. It took awhile for me to remember what to do if that happened. I had another jump coming for the fees I paid, but I declined.
I no longer feel the urge to ride the scariest roller coaster I can find.
So disgusting that I literally had to run to the restaurant bathroom to throw up. I almost didn’t make it. My stomach was turning before it even knew what hit it. I can’t even see them now without gagging.
Camping in the snow. Specifically sub-zero temps in a pup tent pitched on a sheet of ice with a sleeping bag that was too tight to zip around me, and a sleeping pad that was wholly insufficient for the temps.
I abdolutely love camping but that experience… never, never again.
Climbed all the way to the top inside the local clock tower (nice experience, good exercise, but I have heart problems now, so won’t attempt it again.)
Deep sea fishing for halibut on a hazardous craft day.
No, I did not get seasick. But reeling up a manhole cover from 800 feet as the boat tosses violently to and fro, trying to keep my feet on a deck slick with fish goo and other people’s vomit, is not my idea of a fabulous memory.
I love halibut and am willing to endure a fair amount of adversity to feature it on my dinner plate… but there’s a limit. (And not just for the number of halibut!)
My father was an USAF pilot for 4 years, and flew for the MD ANG for 27 years…the last 18 of those, he flew C-130’s and routinely dropped troops, including the Golden Knights…once I asked him if he would consider sky diving, he said, “There’s no reason for leaving a perfectly good airplane”, that sounded reasonable to me, and have no desire to leave a perfectly good airplane…when he retired, he said his greatest accomplishment as a pilot was he had an equal number of take-offs and landings…
Did it once, from a crane, attached at the ankles. I should have dove; I jumped. All was fine until I got to the end of my rope (literally) & was whipped around. Once the brain unscrambled, I was hanging upside down by my ankles until they could lower me. Not so much adrenaline rush, either.
Despite pohjonen’s experience, skydiving was amazing & a lot more fun than bungeeing.
Cave/mine exploration…when we were kids, we went to Luray Caverns and Laurel Caverns for school trips and family trips, they are very cool and well worth it, but, they are generally wide-open, when I was in college, I visited a buddy of mine in Colorado where he convinced me to go on a guided mine tour…it was terrifying, you had to squeeze through certain places, about half way in, I said, I am out of here, I discovered I am very claustrophobic and simply writing about this is giving me anxiety…ugh…never again, and I’m not sure I’d go back to Luray or Laurel Caverns as it might trigger those memories…
Gone to see an episode of American Ninja Warrior taped. In Las Vegas. At 2am on a June night. SRO in the venue and you line up on the sidewalk outside up to 3 hours before being let in, b/c there are other audience groups that rotate every hour or so. Worst of it was learning on entry that there was little competing left to do, they needed our group primarily for (faked) reaction shots.
That was also the last time (knock wood) I’ll stay up all night and then drive many hours home, but it was hardly the only time I’ve done that.
When I was in high school, I read a book about candy striping, and thought it would be a cool thing to do. I went with a friend to the orientation. That was it for me. Just being in the hospital made me too uncomfortable. I knew right then that not only would I never be a candy striper, I would never work in a hospital in any capacity.
I have done other types of volunteer work since, but never in a hospital or medical setting.
I hiked across the Grand Canyon once. It’s one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever seen, and I speak of my hike with a certain amount of pride; I also think I was on the verge of heat stroke and could barely walk for ten days.
So, been there, done that, and I don’t figure it’ll change enough for me to see it again. I’d do a rafting trip down the Canyon, though.
I think it was in Chuck Yeager’s autobiography that he mentioned how many more landings he had than takeoffs. He bailed out twice (once during WWII, once during test flying), but most of the X plane research flights were carried aloft by a bomber, so those flights had landings without takeoffs.