Tinkerntom wrote:

Frederick Burroughs wrote:

Here, just breath normally. There's plenty of smoke to go around.
Don't try to hold your breath. The contact buzz will still get you.
See:
http://www.user.shentel.net/riburr/p...ng070401b.html


But I don't like any smoke! In fact, I don't like anything, that dulls
me to the wonderful feeling of being alive. If you have never died, you
may not be familiar with the extreme delight of being alive! Apparently
Thompson did not share that delight! Maybe to much smoke? TnT


HST(hompson), by his own count, was documented to have died sixteen
times by 2003. Unfortunately he wasn't able to perform the final tally
himself. (Guess he was off by at least one, by necessity.) Though, it
is said he made adequate arrangements in case of an unredeemable and
irreversable demise. It can't be argued HST didn't live a full life,
or that his life was devoid of any delight.

Personally, my life has been perilously close to the edge a few times.
The fact that I'm still here gives me pause. Each incident is like a
skin has been shed from a progressing metamorphosis. Most people I
know have stood at death's door once or twice, but were denied
admittance by luck or attentive guardian angel.

Absent any inhalation or ingestion of psychotropic substances,
paddling offers a number of opportunities for a natural high. There's
the endorphin rush from strenuous exercise. We've probably all
experienced frequent jolts from adrenaline rushes, which are no
stranger to the paddle sports. Sunshine has a direct affect on
melatonin and vitamin D levels in the body, resulting subtle changes
in consciousness. The constant bobbing and tipping of a canoe or kayak
is stimulating to the inner ear and our sense of balance. Flowing
water generates an electric current. What are the effects of this
current on the nervous system? On fla****er and slow rivers the
absence of sound is a form of sensory deprivation, relative to the
noise of normal modern developed environments. Sensory deprivation can
cause profound changes in consciousness. The sparkling of sunshine
across wavelets and ripples can have a stroboscopic effect. Strobe
lights are well known and used to induce changes in consciousness. So,
you're right. With all the psychedelic pandemonium going on in your
canoe or kayak, why on earth would you need a joint?






--
"This president has destroyed the country, the economy,
the relationship with the rest of the world.
He's a monster in the White House. He should resign."

- Hunter S. Thompson, speaking to an antiwar audience in 2003.

Dave Manby wrote:
If the contributor to this newsgroup stay on topic then how the hell
are
we going to find out what they are like? I would hate to invite some
of
the members of this group on an extreme descent because though they
may
be the best kayak paddler out there I just could not get along with
them
because of their known attitude to the local population! Now a less
than
extreme descent where there are no external stress factors to deal
with
then I can tolerate having a redneck rafter along to move the beer!
(AND
before you flame me NOT all rafters are Rednecks)


Thanks for that last one Dave! I am a rafter, and an IK'er on the
little stuff, but definately not a Redneck. I absolutely agree on the
points about compatibility.

I would rate "group dynamics" as probably one of the most important
factors. It is hard enough to do the right thing under difficult
conditions without adding more ingredients into the fire. The reality
TV shows are a good example of that.

I am a believer that societies advance through co-operation rather than
individual effort. And while I value my independence, the interests of
the group typically supercedes my own concerns. This is probably at
the heart of the great divide in the US. From my point of view, that
separation is based one of two world views:

1) What is good for me.
2) What is best for the common good.

Taxes, salvation, recreation, pre-emtpive war - you name it.

Railtramp

Blakley LaCroix
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
RBP Clique member #86.

The best adventure is yet to come ...

Frederick Burroughs wrote:
Tinkerntom wrote:

Frederick Burroughs wrote:

Here, just breath normally. There's plenty of smoke to go around.
Don't try to hold your breath. The contact buzz will still get you.
See:
http://www.user.shentel.net/riburr/p...ng070401b.html


But I don't like any smoke! In fact, I don't like anything, that
dulls
me to the wonderful feeling of being alive. If you have never died,
you
may not be familiar with the extreme delight of being alive!
Apparently
Thompson did not share that delight! Maybe to much smoke? TnT


HST(hompson), by his own count, was documented to have died sixteen
times by 2003. Unfortunately he wasn't able to perform the final
tally
himself. (Guess he was off by at least one, by necessity.) Though, it

is said he made adequate arrangements in case of an unredeemable and
irreversable demise. It can't be argued HST didn't live a full life,
or that his life was devoid of any delight.

Personally, my life has been perilously close to the edge a few
times.
The fact that I'm still here gives me pause. Each incident is like a
skin has been shed from a progressing metamorphosis. Most people I
know have stood at death's door once or twice, but were denied
admittance by luck or attentive guardian angel.

Absent any inhalation or ingestion of psychotropic substances,
paddling offers a number of opportunities for a natural high. There's

the endorphin rush from strenuous exercise. We've probably all
experienced frequent jolts from adrenaline rushes, which are no
stranger to the paddle sports. Sunshine has a direct affect on
melatonin and vitamin D levels in the body, resulting subtle changes
in consciousness. The constant bobbing and tipping of a canoe or
kayak
is stimulating to the inner ear and our sense of balance. Flowing
water generates an electric current. What are the effects of this
current on the nervous system? On fla****er and slow rivers the
absence of sound is a form of sensory deprivation, relative to the
noise of normal modern developed environments. Sensory deprivation
can
cause profound changes in consciousness. The sparkling of sunshine
across wavelets and ripples can have a stroboscopic effect. Strobe
lights are well known and used to induce changes in consciousness.
So,
you're right. With all the psychedelic pandemonium going on in your
canoe or kayak, why on earth would you need a joint?






--
"This president has destroyed the country, the economy,
the relationship with the rest of the world.
He's a monster in the White House. He should resign."

- Hunter S. Thompson, speaking to an antiwar audience in 2003.

Probably explains why I like to paddle, bike and hike, ski and skate,
and even set in front of my monitor posting to usenet. Its the electric
current flowing out from the monitor, combine that with all the warm
fuzzies that I get reading on the RBP, I can't help myself. Though the
brownies would help. TnT

"Frederick Burroughs" wrote in message
...

Personally, my life has been perilously close to the edge a few times. The
fact that I'm still here gives me pause. Each incident is like a skin has
been shed from a progressing metamorphosis. Most people I know have stood
at death's door once or twice, but were denied admittance by luck or
attentive guardian angel.


Great idea for a thread! I've been tossing around the idea of a collection
of short vignettes of every time I've almost died...either from being
hammered and not quite getting across the threshold, or taking a random left
turn when later I discover that a right turn would have been fatal. Why not
start a new thread, tell us your 'times I almost died' tale, and lets hear
some skin crawlers from folks.

--riverman
You go first, I'll be right on your tail :-)

"riverman" wrote in message
...
Great idea for a thread! I've been tossing around the idea of a collection
of short vignettes of every time I've almost died...either from being
hammered and not quite getting across the threshold, or taking a random
left turn when later I discover that a right turn would have been fatal.
Why not start a new thread, tell us your 'times I almost died' tale, and
lets hear some skin crawlers from folks.

--riverman
You go first, I'll be right on your tail :-)

I can only recall one time in my life when I actually thought I was gonna
die.

I was perfectly sober, met a girl at a bar. We went out side to talk.
After we had decided that I would pick her up on a Sat. and go ridin' on my
Harley, some girl came up and began arguing with the girl I had just met.
Next thing I know there are these drunk and drugged out fellas talkin' ****
to me? Well, being young, dumb, and you know the rest. I began talking
**** back. Me and this one guy get to tusslin' about, when one of his
buddies shoves a hawk-bill knife up against my throat and says, "I'll cut
your ass mother****er!" The only words that came out of my mouth were,
"this ain't necessary." Real macho, I know. The only thing I could think
of at the time was me wakin' up dead in the morgue and him soberin' up in
jail sayin', "I did what?"

Thankfully, the girls went to fightin' and the guyz turn their attentions to
a catfight. I helped break the girls up, while the other guyz went after
some other poor fella. I got the girl for one night and decided to never
see her again after that.

And here I am, girless, but alive.

Mark

"bearsbuddy" wrote in message
...

"riverman" wrote in message
...
Great idea for a thread! I've been tossing around the idea of a
collection of short vignettes of every time I've almost died...either
from being hammered and not quite getting across the threshold, or taking
a random left turn when later I discover that a right turn would have
been fatal. Why not start a new thread, tell us your 'times I almost
died' tale, and lets hear some skin crawlers from folks.

--riverman
You go first, I'll be right on your tail :-)

I can only recall one time in my life when I actually thought I was gonna
die.

I was perfectly sober, met a girl at a bar. We went out side to talk.
After we had decided that I would pick her up on a Sat. and go ridin' on
my Harley, some girl came up and began arguing with the girl I had just
met. Next thing I know there are these drunk and drugged out fellas
talkin' **** to me? Well, being young, dumb, and you know the rest. I
began talking **** back. Me and this one guy get to tusslin' about, when
one of his buddies shoves a hawk-bill knife up against my throat and says,
"I'll cut your ass mother****er!" The only words that came out of my
mouth were, "this ain't necessary." Real macho, I know. The only thing I
could think of at the time was me wakin' up dead in the morgue and him
soberin' up in jail sayin', "I did what?"

Thankfully, the girls went to fightin' and the guyz turn their attentions
to a catfight. I helped break the girls up, while the other guyz went
after some other poor fella. I got the girl for one night and decided to
never see her again after that.

And here I am, girless, but alive.


Wow. Well, that certainly qualifies!

I guess I'm a bigger risk-taker than you (or else I have a heavier sense of
the dramatic) as I can think of a few times right off the top of my head.

1) I was hiking in the Grand Canyon with my friend Roger (now
deceased.....damn cancer!) and we went up into Tapeats Cave above Thunder
River. If anyone else has climbed into it, they know that you do a
switchback walkup to about 100 feet above the river, then move out onto an
exposed ledge that's about 6 inches wide, and upclimb about 10 feet to the
mouth of the cave. Its not all that hard, as long as you don't look down on
the upclimb (which has really bombproof handholds, like climbing a ladder).
When we finished exploring the cave, we came out at the entrance, which is
like a narrow doorstep, and had to bend over to get our hands down at the
lip of the mouth, turn in place, and get our feet on the face to downclimb
to the ledge. Sort of like stepping off a roof onto a ladder that ends right
at the edge, so there's no handhold. When I bent over to put my hands down
by my feet, my butt hit the wall behind me and launched me forwards, right
at this 100 foot dropoff. I grabbed the lip at my toes with my fingers over
the lip, and had just enough strength in my hands to push hard with my
fingers and catch myself before I teetered off. Roger, standing a ways
behind me, wisely said "Nice move, now you better downclimb real fast before
the adrenaline hits you and your hands get all sweaty and your knees start
to shake." Later I was almost in tears.

2) I was once hitchhiking down route 128 outside Boston (back in College),
and as I was getting no rides, I started walking along the breakdown lane to
the next exit. As I approached the giant green sign saying 'exit ahead', I
noticed that my shadow on the sign had an interesting behavior (it was
night, and the car headlights cast a shadow) It would start small, at the
bottom of the sign, then start to get large as the cars approached me, then
suddenly would sweep sideways, accelerating off the sign as the car passed
me. There also were multiple shadows moving at the same time, as the busy
traffic roared by. Suddenly, I noticed one shadew grow larger than the rest
and not sweep sideways. I leaped off the side of the breakdown lane just as
this little sports car shot by, missing me by fractions of a foot. I mean,
it was really close. He was driving like a lunatic, doing fighter passes
in the breakdown lane, and he never even saw me. If I hadn't noticed the
shadow thing, I would have been run down. To this day, that particular one
still scares the bejesus out of me.

3) On a river trip I was leading in Canada (I posted about this one here
years back) I was going around a bend and the river split in two around a
tall gravel island. On instict alone, I took the inside channel, motioning
for all the client boats to follow me. Normally, you take the outer channel
as the inside track often gets shallow. Once we got below the island, we
eddied out and hiked back upstream along the outside channel, and there was
a huge strainer right across the river. The banks were all large
cobblestones with no eddys, and there was absolutely no way to stop. IF we
had taken the outside channel, we would have all been swept into the
strainer and definately drowned. To this day I have no idea why I took the
inside channel...just a vague instinct that it was a spring trip, and 'if'
there had been any strainers they would have been swept to the outside
channel. Turns out, that this was exactly what happened.

--riverman

"riverman" wrote in message
...

Wow. Well, that certainly qualifies!

I guess I'm a bigger risk-taker than you (or else I have a heavier sense
of the dramatic) as I can think of a few times right off the top of my
head.
--riverman

Oh, I thought you were talkin' about REAL Near Death Experiences!

Seriously, I have lived a fairly uneventful life. I'm a home body, where as
you and so many others are travelers and thrill seekers.

Outside of the drunkin' bar fights and ingestion of drugs that I had no idea
what they were or would do to me, I have lived a fair safe life. Well
except for the few times I have almost drowned, but I figure everyone has
almost drown, if they have spent any time around water.

Now my brother! He almost lost his life when I was twelve, and I was the
one pointing the .38 cal at him, but I digress.

Mark

"bearsbuddy" wrote in message
...

"riverman" wrote in message
...

Wow. Well, that certainly qualifies!

I guess I'm a bigger risk-taker than you (or else I have a heavier sense
of the dramatic) as I can think of a few times right off the top of my
head.
--riverman

Oh, I thought you were talkin' about REAL Near Death Experiences!

Seriously, I have lived a fairly uneventful life. I'm a home body, where
as you and so many others are travelers and thrill seekers.

Outside of the drunkin' bar fights and ingestion of drugs that I had no
idea what they were or would do to me, I have lived a fair safe life.
Well except for the few times I have almost drowned, but I figure everyone
has almost drown, if they have spent any time around water.

Now my brother! He almost lost his life when I was twelve, and I was the
one pointing the .38 cal at him, but I digress.

Mark

Hey, tell us about a near drowning. Those are always interesting...

--riverman
(for everyone involved)

Ok not boat or alcohol relate. Ok I was probably hung over. Flew in a Cessna
150 with a college friend to check out a grass strip his dad was buying. Dad
being smarter than us drove up. We landed to find that the old owner had not
cut the grass in a long while, which we did not see from the air. The strip
was slanted with a high voltage wire over one end. We looked the place over
and returned to the plane. We tried to take off into the wind but could not
come close to getting airborne due to the grass and the upslope. Turned
around and ran out of the wind (bad), downhill (good) towards the wire at
the other end (bad). Turns out the wire would not matter because there was
no way in hell we could have gotten up high enough to hit it. My friend was
bouncing the plane from wheel to wheel to try to cut down on the drag from
the high grass. We picked up speed so slow I thought I should get out and
push. We were committed with no way to stop before the barn (did I forget to
mention the barn at this end of the field - very bad). We squeaked into the
air with the stall warning blaring and made it over the barn only because it
did not have a weather vane (I still looked back for tire tracks on the
roof). I was shook, I had spent many hours in small planes at this point,
but that was a little close for me. My friend had done well. He didn't panic
and he got it in the air. Poor judgment for committing to the takeoff not
withstanding, he was cool through it all. I didn't get really, really
concerned about what we just did until he turned to me and with that typical
pilot understatement said "That was not good". The problem was his total
lack of color and the buckets of sweat coming off his face. Well like the
saying goes that which does not kill you. He has made a very good career
getting people safely from place to place for the last 20 years and I
learned to open my damn mouth when I don't like the looks of something. That
has probably saved me from having more stories like this one. Although I do
have a few more but I will pause to read about your missteps for awhile.

Great idea Riverman - nice break from the other thread. Anyone taking bets
on how long it takes this thread to digress ;

Ken

"riverman" wrote in message
...

"Frederick Burroughs" wrote in message
...

Personally, my life has been perilously close to the edge a few times.
The
fact that I'm still here gives me pause. Each incident is like a skin
has
been shed from a progressing metamorphosis. Most people I know have
stood
at death's door once or twice, but were denied admittance by luck or
attentive guardian angel.


Great idea for a thread! I've been tossing around the idea of a collection
of short vignettes of every time I've almost died...either from being
hammered and not quite getting across the threshold, or taking a random
left
turn when later I discover that a right turn would have been fatal. Why
not
start a new thread, tell us your 'times I almost died' tale, and lets hear
some skin crawlers from folks.

--riverman
You go first, I'll be right on your tail :-)

"riverman" wrote in message
...

...tell us your 'times I almost died' tale...

A bunch of us were at Wyalusing state park, at the confluence of the
Wisconsin and the Mississippi rivers for a weekend of camping......sometime
around 1979, I guess. Wyalusing is a beautiful place featuring, among other
attractions, a series of trails along the tops of the bluffs overlooking the
rivers. One of the campgrounds is near enough to the bluffs that the
distant lights of Prairie du Chien are visible across the river at
night......a gorgeous sight.

For some of us these were days of hard drinking and frequent herbal
indulgence. Scott was something of an exemplar of the lifestyle and I did
my best to keep up. One night, for reasons that were never examined (and
which would doubtless remain a complete mystery anyway), we wandered off
from the group at the campground and, between tokes and sips, managed to
stumble down a bunch of trails in the dark for an hour or more. The beer
and other liquid refreshments taking their inevitable toll, we stopped at
one point to take a leak standing side by side straddling the narrow trail.
Having finished, Scott stepped boldly forward......and I reached out,
grabbed him by the collar and jerked him off his feet as I shrieked "STOP!"
"What the ****?!," he queried from where he had fallen. I didn't answer. I
was thinking. Something was wrong.......but I couldn't quite put my finger
on it.

Drunk as I was, there was a wee bit of my brain.......somewhere down in the
old reptilian part......that had been monitoring the situation, and didn't
like what it saw....or heard......or DIDN'T hear, to be more precise. When
**** hits the ground it makes a splashing noise. Neither of us had paid any
attention at the time, but there was no splashing noise. I flicked on my
lighter and, after several tries, managed to light a piece of paper or bark
or something.......just enough to show that I was standing within a foot of
a 75 foot drop-off ending at the proverbial "jagged rocks below".

Wolfgang
just one of many "scott and wolfgang get really stupid" stories.