Through-hiked the John Muir Trail.
Had a gun put to my head.
Survived my appendix bursting.
ETA: Uh, that’s three separate events, not one momentous trip!
OK, I’ve spent four hours writing my story. It’s way too long for this thread, so I’ll start my own. Look in MPSIMS for My Journey Out West.
It’s more like how interesting is it every day…
I routinely handle snakes, scorpians, caimans, tarantullas and other assorted nasties and give presentations about them in front of up to several hundred people. It’s my everyday job.
My other jobs are pretty odd too. I help out at the cafe next to the zoo when they have their monthly big events - a full blown Drag Queen Revue. We pick up sequins for weeks after!
I’m also an actress and propsmistress in an Alice Cooper tribute band and I get to electrocute our frontman, have my arm ripped off and wrangle the snake.
I’m still waiting for something that stands out as most interesting. Somehow I suspect I haven’t got there yet…
Was it like American beer?
Anyone?
After several years of construction, the time came to test fly my homebuilt aircraft.
It was an open-cockpit biplane. Taildragger, of course.
I hadn’t flown in 15 years, no 'dragger experience.
After a few slow runs up and down the field to try and get a feel for it, I throttled, up, the tail lifted, I pulled back on the stick ever so slightly and the plane leapt into the air.
I don’t think I have ever been as frightened/excited before or since.
I made a circuit of the field and made a pretty decent (somewhat bouncy) landing.
That was my first thought too.
In case anyone hasn’t heard it, they’re both fucking close to water.
I rode my bicycle from the Canadian border to southern California one summer when I was about 20 years old.
I spent four months on a bus seeing trip from California to New York, and lived on the streets of New York totally homeless for six months.
I’ve had a number of interesting experiences, but one of the coolest was a hot air balloon ride. The balloon dude couldn’t find a spot to put it down and it was getting dark (can’t fly in the dark!) so he put it down on a newly finished horse track. We crashed pretty hard. Believe me…you haven’t lived until you’ve been beneath the body of a screaming octagenerian (heh-heh…with any luck, that’ll be me ‘n’ Mr. K in another 18 years). Then the owner of the horse farm came running out with a shotgun and held us hostage until the sheriff arrived. It was awesome.
Better than my first thought:
Tasted like cold urine? Ewww…
This is a story that needs to be told.
I guess the most interesting thing I ever did was either…
…living in Europe for 12-1/2 months, spending 4-1/2 of those months backpacking, primarily in eastern and southern Europe, but also through Morocco and Turkey.
…or living for six years in Beirut. That was an experience.
Scuba diving is one of the most wonderful things in the world to do.
I spend a couple of years working on and restoring old steam locomotives and rolling stock. I was the one of the first women to work on the engine mechanical crew of 1218 when she was in excursion service. She’s a big, pretty girl, isn’t she?
Quit graduate school, sold 90% of my belongings. Packed the rest into and on top of my beater of a car and drove across the country with my dad from Rochester, NY to Los Angeles, CA with no job and very little money.
I ran the L.A. Marathon.
I drove the scenic route from Texas to Alaska in March camping out most nights, spent the summer working throughout much of the north from a helicopter including landing on the Arctic ice pack, went climbing or skiing most every Fall weekend and drove back down the AlCan in December.
What’s weird is it started off as just a five minute joyride for the cat.
Repaired a nuclear reactor – underwater.
#1 Ooh ooh! Swam up to a docked nuclear submarine and got a good look up close and personal. Scary thing it was. Harbormaster screamed at us (we were there to look at the sponges! really!). In this day and age we’d have been shot on sight, I suspect. The sub was on shore leave in St. Croix after a tour under the polar ice cap… met the happiest sailors EVAR on the beach.
#2: 7 weeks on an archaeological dig in Bulgaria.
I had sex with a 1980’s TV icon. You would never guess who.
He told me he wasn’t gay, he “just liked to have some fun with boys. Nothin’ wrong with that.”
Since he was very discreet and nice, I’ve decided I’m never going to out him in RL. Hurrah for Internet anonymity.
I led an expedition to a remote mountain range in Panama that had never been visited by scientists before. We had 7 party members plus 24 Indian guides and porters. We were in there for 3 weeks.
I went net-hunting in Zaire with 20 pygmies.
In 1973 I hitchhiked from New York to Oregon. It took me eight days, sleeping in fields and under bridges.
working with live demolitions was pretty cool.
Touring large commercial coal and natural gas fired powerplants top to bottom (literally) was tremendously eye opening, as was touring a submarine shipyard and steel mill with the same level of access.
Going spelunking as an amateur in a few of the limestone caves of upstate NY was very, very cool.
Hey, I did this! Did you ride all the way to the Mexican Border for completeness sake? I ended up skinny as all get out and could consume about 5000 calories a day.
I guess the most interesting thing I’ve done was start a company from scratch (no venture capitol and no pay for 5 years) and helped grow it to the point that I thought I was rich. Unfortunately I got forced out. I then backpacked around the world for a year and a half, which was probably more interesting than the business thing.