Things that could have cost your life. Stupid people tricks

Triathlon Forum
1

Amy has fessed up to extending a run with insufficient planning. I called her on it. Then I remembered going for Lobsters with my son. I had been diving for years, but he had just gotten certified. We are along a jetty, but the tide starts go out, and we cannot swim against the current, particularly with all that stuff on. We tried getting on the bottom. Zack is getting panicky. Me too, but trying not to show it. I grab his BC and yell “Will you do what I tell you for once in your life?” And he yells “This is the stupidist fucking thing we have ever done!” I will always remember that. We tried to get on some rocks, but the waves just knocked us off. Finally I pushed him up and over. Then I had to make the decision to remove my gear and pass it up to him, then swim for it.

Learning to fly was stupid, too, but controlled stupid.

So what did you do that was stupid?

2

Tried to swim to an island in a large freely moving river. There were 4 of us 2 made it, one guy panicked and I literally slapped him to get him to calm down. Both he and I barely made it back to shore. Could have easily become a major tradegy. I was a teenager at the time, never did tell my folks.

3

  1. Drove drunk on many occassions back in South Africa. Can’t believe that was me when I look back at it now.

  2. Went out into 18ft surf and nearly got killed when I drifted out of the channel and got smashed onto the rocks. My friends made it in OK and when they saw me getting tossed around over the rocks they couldn’t believe that I made it out alive.

  3. Got myself cornered by a rhino when I worked at a safari lodge - last time I ever road a motorbike in the bush.

many others…

4

Jumped on a chairlift in the middle of the summer at a mid-way station with a buddy of mine, but couldn’t pull myself up. It’s a lot bigger jump without snow on the ground. Hung from the lift over 150ft in the air as it moved up the mountain. My friend finally pulled me up. Still freaks me out.

5

I took public transportation many times in many Third World countries. And got many lifts from crazy and/or drunk ex pats in those same countries. Equally stupid and dangerous.

6

Crossed the yellow line coming down Mt. Diablo at 40+ mph. Ducked back on my side of the road two seconds before a pickup came around the corner. I literally had to stop to calm down and stop from shaking.

I was running along a small trail at Swallow Falls in western Maryland as a kid. Tripped, fell, and skidded to a halt with my head and shoulders hanging over a 100-foot drop. Didn’t scare me at the time, but it does now.

7

Mont St. Michele france (sorry to hack the spelling) We were told the wrong time the tide rolls in. We were walking on what looks to be a big sandbar and the tide is getting deep all around us next to this town/church built in the ocean. People are watching us with alarm and we think we are cool until we got a couple hundred yards from this place and had no idea how to get to land. We walked until the water was at our chest and the tide was ripping, 5 minutes later we would have drowned. Had to scale this fortress and walk all day in wet clothes. The ocean is about 5 miles out and too shallow for boats, so our rescue would have never come. I was in the Army at the time and thought near death was cool.

8

Great thread Monk!

When I was 17 the love of my life and I were hiking around a river. We got to a spot where the lazy river turned into some serious rapids around a short but steep rock formations. We thought it would be funny to go to Wal-Mart and buy a cheap inflatable raft, like the kind meant to float in your backyard pool, and take on the rapids.

So we are back in the river, standing knee high about 100 yards upstream of the rocks and situating the raft. As soon as we say go and jump on the raft it dissappears. We both get caught in the current and get seperated. I got banged around in the rocks and was trapped underater for maybe a minute before I could free myself. Somewhere in all of this I lose my trunks. I surface and call her name looking for her. I don’t see her. I panic, thinking she is dead. She surfaces 20 feet downstream from me, apparently going through the same mess I did.

We’re both bruised, bleeding and laughing. I have to drive her back to her Dad’s house naked. We later found out that a handfull of people die doing that same thing every year.

9

Went on a kayaking vacation with my OTL a few years back. We explored the Western shore of the Kaipara harbour (big harbour north of Auckland). Going up was fine, but coming back a few days later the wind got up midway through a crossing of a bay. The waves were about 4/5 feet high, threatening to tip us out of our sea kayaks. We had to point straight into the waves and just head for shore…it took us an hour before we washed up, exhausted, on a beach.

Truly terrifying experience. We were stupidly unprepared for what we might face.

10

If you listen to my co-workers every ride I do without my cell phone I am risking my life.

I came real close to being like the guy caught in the canyon under a boulder. Was on a solo backpacking trip on Mt. Washington in NH. Coming down I wanted to get to the car that day so I am hurrying and not paying real close attention. I was still a good 6 miles out when I missed the trail as it cut back and forth across the river. I figured I’d walk the river until I found it again. As I step off the bank the 4’ diameter rock I was on came loose. It crashed into the river with me riding along. After we all come to a stop I am hurting and bleeding. I go to move and I am stuck. The sleeve of the coat I have on and the left side where it was unzipped are under the rock. It missed my arm by about and inch and a half. Never could get the coat out. I was off trail by a good half mile and with the sound of the river I doubt anyone would have heard me. The good news is that I was in a river so I wouldn’t have died of dehydration. The bad news is that the water was very cold and I probably would have died from hypothermia long before I got the nerve up to cut off my arm. So if you are ever off trail on the south side of Mt Washington and find a 10 year old coat under a boulder, can you pick it up for me?

I also have a non-self-inflicted bullet hole that goes through my thumb. That one still gives me the shivers after about 22 years.

11

I was studying abroad in Costa Rica in 2002, and four friends and I were trying to get back from the beach. There were no bus tickets, and we couldn’t afford a licensed cab ride three hours away. So we negotiated with a pirate cab, only he was driving a small sedan, and six people in that small a car would have tipped off police checkpoints that something was up. So a friend and I took turns riding in the trunk of a shady car for three hours.

12

About 12-13 years ago, Hunny Bunny and I hiked to where the lava was flowing into the ocean on the Big Island. No one else was around and we literally were standing on the edge of newly cooled lava, looking down at a fountain below us flowing into the ocean. Hot lava hitting the water was exploding, flying 30-50 feet in the air, landing in bits around us. We laughed about it.

About a year later an aquaintance was killed at the same location when the “shelf” of new lava broke off and fell into the ocean. It was captured from a distance on video. You could see others running for their lives, falling on the sharp lava and could see a faint figure against the glow not making it. We learned that the newly cooled areas of lava are very unstable and up to a 1/4 mile inland can crack off.

14

Mine is probably not as dangerous as I initially thought, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Went with two friends, now married to each other, to Thailand the summer after business school. We went all over, from Bangkok to Chiang Mai to Kanchanaburi down to Phuket.

While in Chiang Mai, standard jump-off point for trekkers, we rented motorbikes, which are still the best way to get around. We bought a map and intended one morning to go to a national park where we could see the elephants, etc. Now if you’ve been to Thailand, you’ll know their written language is nearly unparseable, and we basically couldn’t even read the map with any accuracy (before GPS). Anyway, maybe 30 minutes after we started the day, we took our first of many wrong turns. Pretty soon the roads started to deteriorate into gravel, then mud, then just these washed-out gullies as we traversed up and down the foothills of basically this big rainforest.

If you know the geography of that area of the world, you know that Chiang Mai is one corner of the Golden Triangle, the largest production area for poppies in the world. As a result, it tends to be patrolled by some not-so-nice guys on horseback with guns. In addition, Thailand has a healthy supply of venomous snakes, and spiders, if I’m not mistaken.

Anyway, by noon we pretty much realized we were fucked. I was enjoying the offroading aspect so much (going downhill through these rock-strewn gullies at 35 mph) that i blew my rear tire. My friend, who was a little bigger than me, was running low on gas. His girlfriend was just pissed at both of us. Meanwhile, I’m riding on a rubber covered rim.

We kept riding through the forest, hoping to run into some sign of unarmed civilization. We ended up happening upon a hill-tribe settlement, which is the blanket term for Thai aboriginals. Fortunately for us, a lot of people come up here just to see these people, so we killed two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, we rode up a steep incline to find out that it was a dead end, while some hilltribe members rode past us in a pickup truck, laughing at us.

By 5 o’clock, we were getting pretty desperate. Lost, hungry, running out of gas, with no idea where were and a justified fear of being in the wrong place (as it turns out, we ended up maybe 25km from the Burmese border), we ended up in a dirt village, thinking we would have to beg someone for the courtesy of sleeping on their dirt floor. But then we happened upon a sort of open shack which we took be like a garage. There were a couple of guys there, and through some elementary Thai and sign language, we convinced them to patch my tube for US$1. And just around the corner there was a gas pump sticking out of the ground where we able to fill up.

Of course, about 10 km later my tire burst again, but we managed to find some sort of paved road, and rolled into a gas station, where we able to get everything fixed and filled up. But now it was getting dark, and a tropical rainstorm came down on us, although we now knew the way back to Chiang Mai.

So we ended up riding down this Thai highway at night at like 40 mph in a torrential rainstorm on these motorbikes, desperately hoping not to get to run over or to slide on the slippery lane markings and end up under a chicken truck.

We did make it back, covered in all sorts of crap, and exhausted. So we showered, dressed, and went to McDonald’s. And the bike rental place had no idea that I put the rim through 50 miles of bad road.

15

Great thread! - Last Summer I went on my annual trip to the Alps with some Uni firends and on about the fourth day we took our bikes and did a 60 mile ride up the Col de Soulor and Col d’Aubisque (HC when it’s in the Tour - a great ride). That evening we went to a Disco in the valley to celebrate and several beers later my friend dared me to try the route we’d done that day on foot. Protesting that my jeans would chafe we decided that boxers were the way forward and so after a quick change in the toilets I set off and ended up covering about 35 miles in about 7 hours starting at midnight. It was by a distance the most stupid thing I’ve ever done as the road was shut, there was absolutely no way I could contact anyone if I got into trouble and all I had with me was a camera to photograph every kilometre sign they had on the way up for cyclists. It goes without saying that it was absolutley freezing and when I stopped at the top I quickly got extremely cold (not helped by a lack of legwear). I managed to get most of the way back by thumbing a lift from a ranger who came over he pass about half an hour after after I arrived and was the first car I’d seen since I set off. It took us an hour to get down and all that he said to me in the entire time was “Anglais?” to which I replied “oui” - there really wasn’t much else I could say.

The two scariest moments were being chased up the road by what sounded like a huge dog that I could hear but in the dark couldn’t seen and then about 3 k from the top having to pass through an 800m tunnel by putting my hand on the wall and walking blindly forward - it literallymade no difference if I had my eyes open or shut.

On the upside I did win the bet.

16

One crazy time, I ate at a Shoney’s buffet. Didn’t even get sick. But, I shudder in horror every time I think about it.

As a kid, we used to build tree houses. Once, while at the near-top of a poplar tree, hammer in hand, I fell backwards towards the ground. I can still remember thinking, “I wonder how many kids die this way?” on the way down. Somehow, I find myself clutching to a limb as it bends and creaks from absorbing my weight, then breaks when I’m about 2 feet off of the ground. I don’t recall feeling the limb and grabbing it, but I had it in a solid-tight grip. The hammer I had at the beginning of the fall hit the ground right beside me, and buried a few inches into the dirt. I laughed nervously, then did what most any good tree-fort builder would do…pulled the hammer out of the ground and climbed back up the tree to finish the fort.

I tried to push my younger brother off of a flat garage onto a pile of pine straw below. Oh, yeah, he was on a tricycle at the time. I had given him a good long push, then thought better of it and was going to let him coast the final 5-6 feet (because I didn’t want to go over too by miscalculating my momentum). Luckily, he decided it was a bad idea before it was too late. I can still the the gravel spewing up from his feet as the trike stopped right on the edge…

He’s an accountant now. He rarely steps outside a solidly built building without some trepidation.

17

Drunk, I did a gainer off a friend’s roof into their pool in high school. My head missed the concrete ledge by inches. I got laid for it though so wtf.

18

  1. Age 10-ish, decided to fix the problem of a toy train set that moved far too slow. Way too much track (table-tennis table sized layout, with lots of interior stuff in addition to the big perimeter oval) for the stock low-voltage transformer to adequately power the engine by itself all the way around. Disconnected the wires from a switched 110v halloween-pumpkin lighting set my electronics professor dad had rigged and reconnected to the track. Plugged into the wall, threw the switch, and in the same split second: the train jumped forward about 1", the stock transformer exploded (on the opposite side of the table, thank goodness), and I jumped out of my skin. Only after Dad came running downstairs and saw what I had done and explained it to me did I realize how close I came to electrocuting myself. If my first reaction (after the above) had been to touch the track instead of flipping the switch back off, oy…

  2. High School, bike commuting thru the northern stretches of Milwaukee’s inner city during my senior year at Riverside. That’s using Center and North Avenues between Humboldt and 51st St for those familiar with the city. Perfected my trackstand that year, as I was in no way shape or form going to be caught flat footed at a stoplight when the locals started commenting on how nice my bike was. One gorgeous spring afternoon I was enjoying a high-speed (timed the lights perfectly - no stops!) trip home when two dudes in a hoopty cut me off with a RH turn. Being young and dumb I thought nothing of hurling a few expletives their way as we continued along our divergent trajectories. About 4 blocks later they reappeared from behind and pulled alongside to express their displeasure with my language. “why you gotta curse, man?” “you cut me off, man!” “you coulda been killed man” “yeah, I know, you coulda run me over” “no man, you coulda got killed, man, why you gotta curse at me” “cuz you cut me off man” “just watch your language man” “OK…” and they pull away. About a block later it hit me that I never did see the talkative passenger’s left hand, which had in fact been tucked into the center console between him and the driver…I shook the rest of the way home.

  3. College, SE MN (Winona State University). Garvin Heights Road goes up the bluffs at roughly a 10% grade for a mile or so. Very twisty, but before the spring leaves come out you can hit over 50mph on the way down pretty easily by looking thru the trees for oncoming traffic and using the whole road. My roomie hit 55 that way once. Anyway, one day I decide to make a high speed pass at the drop, starting from the highest point of the access road to the park at the top. This is actually higher than the point where the main road tops out and heads out in to the farmland. I push off and as I spin up I see a car come over the crest of the main road. Loathe to lose my momentum I begin gesturing wildly - thumping my chest and pointing at the road ahead - trying to get it across that I wanted (deserved!) to go first. I wasn’t going to let a little thing like a stopsign at the intersection with the main road slow me down either. Well, he/she didn’t get the message, and I had to sprint madly to get to the intersection first. I succeeded, but in doing so I clipped the curb with my back wheel while whipping thru the stop. Back end of the bike kicks up and around to my left, but I managed to body-english it back under me in time to come back across the double yellow. With the car maybe 15ft off my ass. As if my eyes weren’t wide open enough by this time, the car coming uphill 10sec later bugged them fully. That would’ve been quite the sandwich.

  4. Last year, on one of my morning training runs on base where I work. Noted the C130 holding short of the runway (which the road I was on crosses) but thought nothing of it. Paused a little at the runway stopsign and did the instinctive L-R-L check and proceeded. Yeah, that works for things which travel at sea level…not for little twin turboprops that appear out of the sun bearing down on me about 10sec before landing. Instead of doing the slightly less dumb thing and just hitting the deck I try to gas it (oh the futility!) and duck as his undercarriage sweeps by maybe 30ft above my head - which at that range seems like 30", believe me. I gotta think the tower and/or that C130 had been screaming a heads-up to the pilot (and even more choice language in my direction) otherwise I’d have been shredded. One helluva HR spike, folks. Stayed that way even though I dropped the pace to LSD for the balance of the run. ELEVATE YOUR GAZE…“caution, low flying aircraft” signs aren’t just for show. Dumb dumb dumb.

19

About 10 years ago when I was in the Marine Corps, I attend an Assualt Climber Course, basically rock climbing for special missions. I was the commander of the platoon tasked with this mission. As part of the course, we had to lead climbing at night. I was lead climbing about 30 feet of the ground, placing my protection along the way. I hit a tough section of rock, slipped, and fell. When I fell I my protection came out of the rock and I hit the ground hard, flat on my back. I was fortunate and landed on a flat piece of ground-- that was about 4 ft wide-- between two large rocks. I got up, brushed myself, sucked a great big gulp of air and got back on the rock. I have never been so lucky or scared in my life.

20

So many things…

As a kid:

  1. My brother, cousin and I used to get on the roof of my cousin’s two story house and jump over about 12 feet of concrete into the pool. Extra points for jumping into the shallow end…geez.

  2. My brother and I would shoot arrows straight up into the air and see who could get closest to where it would land.

  3. We’d build jumps for our bikes and see how many logs we could jump before we crashed. Crashing was part of the game–but how many would it take to crash you?

  4. There was a train tunnel near our house that was about 1/2 mile long that we’d walk through. We actually got caught in there one night as a train came and had to hug the wall for dear life…that’s the last time we went.

  5. The road we lived on was a HUGE hill, and we’d walk to the top every morning during the summer and see who could stay on their skateboard the longest. Again, crashing was inevitable, but how long would it take?

  6. We saw an expose on snake handling and thought it was really funny, so one summer we did that almost daily–dancing around with cottonmouths and speaking in tongues…good times!

In college:

  1. My roommate and I would go out of our way to jump our cars over a little hill in a residential neighborhood. We’re lucky we never killed anyone.

  2. We stole a cardboard standup of Billy Ray Cyrus from a convenience store and pulled each other down the street on the ice at 50 mph. It was so nuts that people were out on their balconies watching us slam into cars and buildings all day. We felt like rock stars. We called it the “Achy Breaky Sled” (a)because it was Billy Ray Cyrus and (b)because the ride ended when you fell off and went bouncing down the ice and slammed into whatever eventually stopped you.

21

I tried to surf Waimea, February 1981.

I got up, I fell down, I nearly drowned.

I retired, and went home to NJ.