daring and smart.
One day, while I was still in high school, my friend Kendra and I were driving down US-23 toward Ann Arbor. I drove a '91 Tercel back then, and we were moving at a pretty good clip.
Another car pulled up even to us in the right hand lane. His backseat was piled with clothes and boxes all the way up the roof. I cleverly deduced that this was a college student moving his stuff back to school.
He motioned for Kendra to roll her window down. He was kind of cute, and she’s a huge flirt, so she did. He leaned out of his window, holding a note for her. She turned to me and said “Move over about 5 feet and hold the car steady. I’m going for it.”
I am normally a person of common sense, but I don’t know what possessed me. We were going about 80 mph down a major highway. Traffic was heavy. We were only a few feet away from a car being steered by a guy who was hanging out of his window, almost to his waist. My best friend was hanging out of her window, also to the waist. There could have been serious trouble.
She got the note. It was a typewritten list of scavenger hunt items. At the top, in hastily scrawled pencil, it said “Ladies: I am pledging a fraternity. Can you help me with #4 on this list?” Number 4 was “Two female signatures (you know where, boys!!!)”
I hope he had another copy of the list, because this was the point where we switched to I-94. 
So that’s the most physically daring/dangerous thing I’ve ever done. Had we not taken that exit, it could have become the most sexually daring thing as well. Oh well. Can’t have it all, I guess.
Took a gun away from a kid who was shooting at me.
Swam across a small river with alligators in it.
Went under cover once for the police.
Went ghost hunting.
Drove a delivery truck in a high crime Black neighborhood.
Stopped a potential robbery by two guys in a 7-11 at 3 in the morning.
Tried to chase down what I thought was a UFO on a long dirt road at around 2 in the morning.
Chased a burglar down the street at 4 in the morning. (Didn’t catch him.)
Cussed out some guy who walked right out in front of me at a shopping plaza, expecting me to stop for him. (Big guy.)
Tried to eat a raw oyster. (Did not make it.)
Saw a guy on TV crack a raw egg into a glass of whisky and drink it down for breakfast. Tried that, and got the whisky down but not the egg.
Not only did I used to drive Woodward every day (I work downtown), but once I flipped off someone on Woodward in Detroit. He pulled over just to yell at me. Hmmm, maybe that is stupid, not daring. Now I take 75.
My other most daring adventure is white-water rafting. I only went once, but I loved it. Rafted the Ocoee, which has some Class 4 and 5 spots. Fun, fun!
Ok you asked for it…
The most daring thing I’ve ever done is also the stupidest! Me and my friends did Ecstacy and went to the mall…we got tickets to see “Pokemon, the Movie” but we were an hour early…so we went to the parking lot and sat on my friend’s car…he took out a guitar and started playing while me and my female friend (I’m female too) carressed each other’s faces…just then a cop (not a security gurad, a REAL honest-to-God cop) pulled up and told us we were “disturbing the peace” or some shit…he told us to go to a feild or something and we were all like “Thank you officer! By the way, I love that color on you!!!” It wasn’t until we came down did we realize what REAL trouble we could’ve been in if he decided to take us to the station! From one E, you get a shopping list full of drugs that come up in your system…we would’ve been SCREWED!!!
Well, maybe this isn’t so daring compared to some of the other stories but here goes.
A large building was imploded here in Topeka. Of course there were boundaries beyond which you could not pass, and I didn’t. But after the action was over I wanted to get closer than allowed and there was this apparently unguarded alley between a couple of other building across from the one destroyed. I was trying to dare myself into sneaking down the alley when another guy came along. He had more nerve and suggested we do it. So me and this total stranger go tippy toeing down the alley and come out almost right on top of the debris. I pick up a couple of chunks of marble(it was an old bank). A few other folks start drifting out of the alley, we draw the attention of the security people and are shooed away.
I watched the news that evening and see that the stranger I went down the alley with must have gone back again anyway, because there was video of him being arrested after a scuffle with the cops. He had refused to leave I guess. Oh well, I’m glad I did it though.
Getting up every morning.
I think now the most daring thing I’ve done is smoking.
I put a Cessna 150 into a spin.
Tried hang-gliding briefly, did years of scuba-diving and did some snow- and rock-climbing (plus lots of rapelling), but what scared me worst was skydiving (non-tandem). Did five jumps but had to quit because of the stress.
When climbing, I once had to climb up through a big cleft in the rock, down which bowling-ball-sized rocks occasionally funneled. Lots of golf-ball-sized stuff came down, but the big stuff was scary. That pitch took some fast hands and feet, plus a healthy dose of fatalism.
Two Holy Land related things:
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Punched a palestinian in the stomach when he accused me of being a stinking Jew (I am a Jew. But I’ve showered recently) in the Arab section of Jerusalem.
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Accepted a dare from some Bedouins in the Sinai to walk through what they told me was an old mine field from the war.
What the hell was I thinking?
But vanilla still wins hands down.
Five years ago I got a summer job as a bike messenger in New York City; I’m not a New Yorker but I had some friends that lived in the East Village and I thought it would be exciting. And it sure was; I was, at various times, cursed at, spat on, slapped/punched, ticketed (many times), doored (that’s when someone in a stopped car about ten feet in front of you opens their door; painful), sideswiped by a slow-moving cab, and had the seat of my bike stolen because it was the only thing I didn’t put lock or chain to. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, though.
I will have to echo the “falling in love” all my daring stuff has been under the influence.