That time I should have died...

JayKay

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Given our tendencies towards telling about our youthful indiscretions.. What's that story again, about the time you almost (or maybe should have) died...?

I'll start..

When I was about 16, I was ripping around south of Bismarck, on the river bottoms, on my dirtbike. On a trail I'd been on many many times. There was a barbed wire fence that had been laying on the ground for at least a couple of seasons. Rode right over it many times. The strand of wire was maybe 4" off the ground.

Went over it this particular day, at just the right speed. My front tire pushed it down, and when it came back up, it went on the topside of my rear brake lever.

Fast forward a couple hours. I wake up laying in the weeds. Bike still standing up in the trail, being held by the wire. Thankfully I was wearing a helmet. Tree stopped me.
 


BrokenBackJack

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Will add a few of mine sometime in the near future, when i am able to sit and type for awhile.
My poor Guardian Angels must of had to work overtime trying to keep me alive! Definitely think i used up more than one of my Guardian Angels!
 

scrotcaster

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I was about 16 or 17 ath the time and the creek in my home town flooded. Me and couple buddies decided to swim/float down with the very strong current. We came around one corner and there was a tree half submerged laying across the creek and current pushing us. I brilliantly decided to slip under the tree feet first, not knowing there was another tree parallel about 8" under that one. I got wedged between the two trees below the surface. If it wouldnt have been for my friends realizing what had happened it would not of ended well.
 

Fritz the Cat

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Had a 125 cc Suzuki dirt squirter that I could ride on the back wheel for a mile. However, we had been riding all day and were low on gas. I popped a wheeling in front of the guys and was doing 55 mph. The gas ran to the back of the tank and the carburetor leaned out. The engine revved and I fell on my back on blacktop. I sat up shimmying on my ass while the guys dodged me as they went by. Then my pants started wearing through and things began to warm up so I popped my hands down and leaped into a forward roll.

That was my only injury. Sprained both thumbs when I put my hands down as the highway yanked both of them straight back. Handling toilet paper was most difficult.
 


db-2

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Well one time I did not make it so that is how it ended.


Okay, one time that always comes back to me was I was racing my 426 Plymouth against a Impala. I was right behind his back bumper (we started the race with me behind his back bumper, okay) at near top end and went to pass. As I moved into the passing lane the front of the Plymouth lifted up and the car moved to the left. Why I can not get that out of my mine from over 50 years ago I do not know. (maybe a time or two when I was overseas in the 60s saving us from the gooks, or a few other muscle car races from the 60s.) db
 

Allen

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Aye carumba, can open...worms everywhere.

So many to choose from.

1. I, while not being a fan of heights, went parasailing in Thailand back in 1991. Nothing really unusual about my trip up and back down, it was the next guy. Rope broke and it destabilized him and I watched the guy splat into about 18 inches of water. He survived, but I no longer wish to parasail.

2. Back in the day when I was "smart" enough to ride bulls for the fun of it, I got piss-pounded into the dirt up in Glenburn bad enough to where I had an out of body experience. I vaguely remember it as if I were sitting on the chutes thinking "Jesus Christ, get up and run..." as if I were watching a friend. Next thing I knew I was throwing myself up and over the fence with less than half a shirt on. Ended up getting nothing but bruises (and most likely a concussion) out of it. I was probably lucky that it was smallish bull even though they were always problematic for me to ride being a little bigger than normal bullrider.

3. Working on a drilling rig we were chaining out of the hole back in the mid 80s. Driller was nothing short of a nut on the controls and as I reached down for the dope brush to grease the next stand of pipe, I saw out of the corner of my eye the driller had his hand on the wrong controls. I glanced to see what my tongs were doing just in time to get smashed in the face by them. I didn't wake up until the derrick hand hit the floor. The driller got mad at the draw-works on the rig and took some time out to adjust them with a BFH and never took credit for his mistake. That was about hour number 3 into a 16 hour shift I was working to get the time off needed for the state finals rodeo the next day.

4. Much like JayKay's cycle accident, I managed to do that with a snowmobile one time as barbed wire snared my ski as I was headed out onto Lake Sak at about 45 mph one day. The bruises on my inner thighs from straightening the handle bars was impressive, as was the pain from using my chest to remove the windshield. Teenagers heal quickly!

5. Picking rock the old-fashioned way with a pitchfork was a recipe for near-disaster as a very small rainstorm approached. Just after it started to rain I was getting back on the old 830 JD when I lifted the now wet pitchfork up to slide it down into a wire holder I'd fashioned for it. The zap from the clouds left me sitting on the ground in a state of confusion long enough (10 minutes???) for my stepfather to come out to the field and find me with a bad hairdo. I've hated working with electricity ever since. I was about 13 at the time.

6. Speaking of electricity, I was running some wiring from a basement I was finishing out to the garage where my electrician friend would eventually make it hot by hooking it up to the panel. As I was trying to weasel the VERY LAST damn one out to the garage, I was up on a short ladder and really struggling at getting it through the wall. In an effort to get a better look at the hole, I over-extended myself and reached up with one hand on the house's natural gas service line and the other had reached around a floor truss. As soon as I got the second hand in place, 220V streamed through my body from one hand to the next. The thud and subsequent beller as I hit the floor brought my now ex-wife running into the basement to see what the hell happened. As luck would have it, my second hand managed to find a spot on the AC unit's electrical feed that had been run past a staple that exposed about two inches of the hot wires. Yep, 220V surging through the chest is not something I would ever recommend. Probably lucky to have been so over extended on the ladder that gravity eventually broke the circuit. The ex was mostly mad because the AC unit quit. This was some 14 years ago now, I still hate electricity.

7+. In my younger and dumber days (sub 22 years old), I managed to roll a pair of 77 Ford pickups. One of which had the driver's side of the cab pushing down into the seat, I'm probably lucky they didn't have seatbelt laws back then. My buddy, I'll call him chainsaw, launched his pickup down the Sanish curve at about 70 mph and off the road into the trees actually flying over some trees until big momma tree V'd his front end. My face enjoyed an up-close view of the windshield shattering. It literally took a chainsaw to clear the trees he flew over to retrieve his pickup. Several people have been killed or permanently paralyzed on this corner over the years it was a gravel road.

Note, not only do I drive nicer nowadays, but I ensure the people I ride with do as well. I've gone 30-some years now with nary a paint scratch. :cool:

I am a lucky SOB, and I know it.
 

db-2

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Maybe when I was working on my scorpion sled the throttle stuck and hit tree at full speed with ski on each side of tree. spent a number of days in hospital and a month or two with a walker.
 

Wallike

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I drove to work today and everyone around me was texting!
 

Allen

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Bonus round.

When I was about 12, a couple friends and I decided to ride bike out to the New Town Marina one nice spring day. Along the way, one of us picked up about 8 ft of small chain that was laying on the highway west of New Town. Once we got to the marina, a couple of us ventured out on the ice. Yep, yours truly fell through the damn ice. A buddy of mine ended up pulling me out of the water using that piece of chain. I don't suppose I was in the water for more than 20 seconds, but it sure seemed like a really long time.

It was a long cold ride back to town that day.
 


7mmMag

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I've had my fair share of them but I'll just tell one story.

Back in high school my cousin bought a 1967 4 door LeMans. Well this car had been sitting for a while so we filled the EXTREMELY weather checked tires with air and decided to see how fast it could go. So I went and got my dads handheld GPS. We went just outside of town on a paved county road and hit 112 mph and then starting going up a hill. So we thought hell lets just turn around and go back down the hill and really get some speed. At the bottom of the hill there was a bridge spanning the James River. I'm in the backseat reading off the speed as we go down the hill. 114....115....116 and when I said 116 we just started going across the bridge and it sounded like a shotgun went off in the car. I remember thinking to myself "What the hell was that??" And thats when all hell broke loose. The car started fishtailing ALL over the road, from one ditch to the other and back again and again and again....I think you get the picture. My cousin ended up finally getting it slowed down and stopped after a mile or so. We all just sat in the car for awhile not saying a thing, gathering our thoughts. When we got out of the car we realized that we blew both back tires. So we blew both back tires at 116 mph and some how didn't roll the car. My old man was not happy when he heard the story. Im sure he will get mad after he reads this story again. Sorry wby257!
 

JayKay

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This is quickly turning into a 'feel good' thread. As in, we should all feel good that we're still around.. . .!
 

ndfinfan

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Used to fish a small creek where I grew up...to access the "honey hole" had to cross a livestock field. Buddy and I did it all the time...we would cross the electric fence using a couple big branches to spread the wires for each other and climb thru. One time I got to the fence before he did...thought I'd put my gear inside the fence line...reached over to drop my tackle box on the ground...woke up staring at the sky. Musta brushed the electric fence when I reached over. Had a burn mark on my ribs and had pissed myself. Oh yea...and one time flying on a military aircraft over the Pacific the plane started filling up with smoke...half way between Hawaii and Guam. But that was not some thing I had any part of causing...and it all worked out...but talk about sphincter tightening!
 


Duckslayer100

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I was 16. Girl I liked needed a ride home -- about 25 minutes away. Said I'd be glad to take her.

Road was a winding one I'd been down countless times. We were blaring the music in my little Geo Prizm, showing her the CDs I had in my visor so she could pick one and put it in the Discman.

Don't know how I missed it. Thought we weren't as far along, apparently. Suddenly she's screaming, "STOP STOP STOP!"

The stop sign is right there. T-intersection. North/South traffic does not stop. Breaks are applied and tires star squealing.

Fly right through the intersection and hit the support wires for the light pole on the other end. It snaps on inpact and we stop in the grass.

Not two seconds later a pack of motorcycles goes flying by.

We walked away with some racing heart beats (not for reasons I was after, unfortunately) and missed death (and the deaths of others) by mere seconds.

No damage to the Geo, either. That was one bullet proof piece of Asian engineering.
 

Wags2.0

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Statute of limitations is 5 years?

- - - Updated - - -

or 10?
 

wjschmaltz

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I try not to think of all the times I should have died in High School/College. Some of them events creep into my head every now and then and I've literally got sick to my stomach. We went a little harder than most I think.

One recent bad one I had was a couple years ago on the first day of a moose hunt. We were flying rivers on day one in NW Alaska deciding where to hunt. My very good friend was flying and I was in the co-pilot seat. He has 20,000+ logged hours flying commercially in Alaska so I'm very comfortable with him. His Citabria had a wind damage insurance claim and wasn't ready for the hunt, so we had his neighbor's Cessna 170 as a loner that we both were familiar with. Anyways, we stopped mid-morning in Kiana to throw in some more fuel and stretch our legs. We put 10 gallons of unleaded into each wing and off we went.

We got about 5 minutes out of town and we were losing power. Pulled a little more throttle and a minute later we would lose power. So we climbed to about 7,000 feet and started heading back to the gravel strip in Kiana - repeating the process to eventually full throttle and losing power the whole way. We got over the run way and my buddy dropped the wing and started to slip us in for an emergency landing. Free falling sideways in an airplane is a sickening feeling that makes a passenger feel absolutely helpless. We finally got to a good elevation where we could make our final approach. We were about 200 yards from the air strip in our short final and we completely lost power. It was only about 5 seconds that we soared over the tundra praying we make the strip; but it seemed likes minutes.

We made the strip by about 50 feet in a bumpy ass landing and hopped out to clear the run way for another plane trying to land. We basically sat there on the ground in a mixture of silence and cussing for about 10 minutes. Started ripping into the plane and I noticed the sight glass for the carburetor filter was about 1/3 full of water. We ended up pulling close to a gallon of water out of each wing. Most will say that a good pilot would have completed a proper pre-flight and sumped the tanks and filled through a mr. funnel - but that really isn't the norm in bush flying. Lesson learned and it is for both of us now. But, most pilots would not have turned around when he did and most pilots would not have been able to slip us in for a landing the way he did. Those seconds that he saved by doing that kamikaze slip basically saved us.

We had a very successful hunt and I'm ready to go again with him in September!
IMG_4280.jpg
 
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