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#41
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"riverman" wrote Hey, tell us about a near drowning. Those are always interesting... --riverman (for everyone involved) well, i have two near drownings. neither all that serious, but "near" enough for me. first: on the outer banks of north carolina, about 1950. i was 8. couldn't swim worth a damn. very wild beach, with serious undertow currents. i was there with my aunt and her girlfriend. that's right--girlfriend. they kept cautioning me to stay close to the beach. i wandered off, chasing baitfish. stepped in a hole that was a couple feet deeper than me, lost traction, and headed out to sea. flailing, screaming, hysterical, inhaled about a gallon of seawater, began to go out (i will never forget the horror of it), and was suddenly grabbed by someone (i never knew who), was pulled back to shore, where i threw up water, etc., and came around. second: went to miami beach on a whim with three other wealthy, spoiled, sorry mutha****ers in the summer of 1958, the year before my high school graduation. we wanted to go scuba diving. walked right in to a shop, no training, no questions asked, and we headed for the "government cut", a breakwater that leads from the waterway to the open ocean at miami beach. famous then and now (i suppose) for its underwater lifeforms. had tanks, fins, and face masks. walked out about 100 yds on the rocks and jumped in. had no real idea of our air supply time. was having one helluva good time underwater, looking at fish, eels, etc, when it became very difficult to breath. so what; just surface, and climb the jetty. wrong. the waves were crashing into the rocks, and their underwater surface was covered with barnacles sharp as buck knives. when you got the tanks out of the water, their weight immediately drove you back under the surface. any attempt to hold on to the rocks resulted in being cut to pieces by the barnacles. obviously, i escaped. or, more accurately, i was salvaged by my friends, who had recognized the loss of oxygen, discarded their tanks, and swam out to look for me. two of them herded me to shore, bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig. the infections from my barnacle cuts came closer to killing me than the sea itself. sorry for the length. but you asked for it. yfitons wayno |
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#42
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riverman wrote:
"Frederick Burroughs" wrote: 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. You go first, I'll be right on your tail :-) I don't have any stories from on the water. I've been paddling for less than a year. We did come very close to getting swamped by a freighter (in Hong Kong) while in a small chartered boat, during a very violent thunderstorm. But, I don't count that time. 1) There was one instance of clear divine intervention - One of my first jobs while still young: I was working construction, laying pipe, ductile iron water pipe. It was saturday morning, raining, wet and muddy on the job site. No one else was there, being a rainy saturday. I was down in the ditch working on the 4" pipe, 5' below the surface. Several sections of the pipe lay uncovered behind me. I was supposed to attach a valve to the end of the pipe, to keep varmints out. It's a heavy iron valve, attached to the pipe-end. 4 T-bolts and nuts are used to tighten a flange and compression gasket to secure the valve onto the pipe. 3 sets of nuts and bolts go on quick and easy, but the last nut and bolt are rusted together. No amount of banging and cussing could get the nut and bolt apart. I stood up and pitched the bolt out of the ditch, turned, and walked down the pipe to get another bolt. After 4 or 5 steps I heard a thud as air rushed past me from behind. I turned back around... Right where I was sitting, just seconds before... The whole side of the ditch had collapsed. If that last bolt and nut had not been rusted together... Not a living soul would've been back on the job site 'til Monday. I searched for the lucky charm for an hour but never found it. 2) A bunch of friends and I went to Virginia Beach for the weekend. Sunday afternoon a thunderstorm blows in, so we decide to go back to the cars and head home. I'm tossing stuff into the side doors of my van. My girlfriend is already in the passenger side. And, lightning is hitting everywhere, *real* close. I've got the cooler full of beer in the back of my van, and an emissary is sent from the other car to grab some beers for the road. I'm in my cutoffs, soaked by rain and ocean water, barefoot, holding the door handle of the van. My friend and I are talking. He's got a bag of peanuts and asks if I want one. He holds a peanut to my face, and... I'm enveloped in white light?! A very strong jolt passes through my right side. The light fades and my friend yells "****! Are you allright, Rick?" I said, "Yeah, I think so," and began messaging and examining my right arm, still tingling. "You just got ****ing hit by lightning! Goddamn!" He said. Then, everybody in the rear car leaned out and asked the same thing, "Are you all right, man?!" "Do you wanna go to the hospital?" "No, I'm ok. I think." I say. "Are you sure? Goddamn. You just got hit by lightning," they asked, wanting to make sure I'm ok. I convince them I was good to go. No need for hospitalization. The lightning was hitting things, close, spitting blue ozone fire. There were some quick jabs about starting a religion before we got on the road home, none the worse for wear. 3+) There was the acute kidney failure, with attending hyperkalemia, and imminent heart failure, but we won't go into that. There was another construction near-accident. Everyone thought I was dead. But, the near-miss left me contemplating my fate for a few seconds, before I yelled to the others that I was ok. I was next to a cornfield, taking photographs of a sunset behind the mountains. My car was parked just before a sharp bend, where the road goes around a hill. I was on the edge of the road and something went across my face, inches from it, making a swishing, whistling sound. A second or two later, I heard the rifle shot. -- "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. |
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#43
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"Wayne Harrison" wrote in message . .. "riverman" wrote Hey, tell us about a near drowning. Those are always interesting... --riverman (for everyone involved) well, i have two near drownings. neither all that serious, but "near" enough for me. first: on the outer banks of north carolina, about 1950. i was 8. couldn't swim worth a damn. very wild beach, with serious undertow currents. i was there with my aunt and her girlfriend. that's right--girlfriend. they kept cautioning me to stay close to the beach. i wandered off, chasing baitfish. stepped in a hole that was a couple feet deeper than me, lost traction, and headed out to sea. flailing, screaming, hysterical, inhaled about a gallon of seawater, began to go out (i will never forget the horror of it), and was suddenly grabbed by someone (i never knew who), was pulled back to shore, where i threw up water, etc., and came around. second: went to miami beach on a whim with three other wealthy, spoiled, sorry mutha****ers in the summer of 1958, the year before my high school graduation. we wanted to go scuba diving. walked right in to a shop, no training, no questions asked, and we headed for the "government cut", a breakwater that leads from the waterway to the open ocean at miami beach. famous then and now (i suppose) for its underwater lifeforms. had tanks, fins, and face masks. walked out about 100 yds on the rocks and jumped in. had no real idea of our air supply time. was having one helluva good time underwater, looking at fish, eels, etc, when it became very difficult to breath. so what; just surface, and climb the jetty. wrong. the waves were crashing into the rocks, and their underwater surface was covered with barnacles sharp as buck knives. when you got the tanks out of the water, their weight immediately drove you back under the surface. any attempt to hold on to the rocks resulted in being cut to pieces by the barnacles. obviously, i escaped. or, more accurately, i was salvaged by my friends, who had recognized the loss of oxygen, discarded their tanks, and swam out to look for me. two of them herded me to shore, bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig. the infections from my barnacle cuts came closer to killing me than the sea itself. sorry for the length. but you asked for it. yfitons wayno Girlfriend?.....um.......you mean........um.......gulp! Wolfgang who used to do a bit of scuba diving in the government cut........we gotta talk some day. |
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#44
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#45
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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 Well as I have been reading the various post, and realizing, how many times I expect I was playing tag with the grim reaper, I thought of two particular incidents that got my attention. The first, during College, I was driving an ambulance to pay the bills. On one particular job, I was transporting a shell shock patient from WW2, down to FT. Sill for treatment. Now on the way down there, there were signs that warned you " Do Not Stop, No Parking", and "Don't drive into the Smoke". Seems that they did tank maneuvers out there, and would drive the big 70 ton tanks right across the road under cover of smoke, and going hell bent for leather. Only a short time previous they had an incident where some cars where crushed by a tank while waiting for the smoke to clear. Anyway as I was driving my way down to the fort hospital, there was alot of smoke this particular trip, and my passenger was getting very agitated, probably had something to do with flashbacks. At some point, he worked his restraints loose, and decided he wanted to drive the ambulance. The only thing I had going for me was I exclusivily controlled the brake, and managed to throw the keys out the window. Then it was katy-bar-the-door, as to who was going to drive the ambulance. He was manaically strong is all I can say. We fought and rolled and wrestled from one end of the ambulance to the other and back! Hitting and scraping and biting like I had never fought. Out there in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden the smoke surrounded the ambulance so thick you could not see 10 feet out from the window. Then I heard the tanks going by a 50 to 70 mph. so close you could reach out and touch them. Not that I tried, I was still to busy fighting the dude in the back of my ambulance. He was slowly wearing down though, and I don't know whether it was my youth or the fact that my adrenaline meter red lined, but I finally got him back in the wheelchair with restraints doubled, and if they were too tight, I don't know if at that point I really cared. I crawled out of the ambulance, with my knees knocking, and found the keys. The whole time the tanks are still going by me, and I to this day don't know how they missed us. I got going down the road, as soon as I could and got out of there. Got him to the hosbital, treated or whatever, and got him back to OKC to the VA hospital there. Turns out, they were evaluating him to go home, after what, 30 years in the hospital. I don't know why they had to send him 60 miles down to FT Sill, but they did. As I got back, and was unloading him out of the ambulance, his wife, who had been supposedly waiting for him all those years, met us with a shotgun. She shot him dead, point blank, right there in front of me in my wheelchair, not a foot from where I was standing, and then shot herself to death as well. Seems from a note we found, that she did not want him coming home because it would mean the end of some sort of financial support that she got as long as he was in the VA Hospital. She figured she couldn't continue to live, so she might as well end it all. That was one messed up day, and the last day I drove the ambulance! Remembering the story, I think I will have to hold off on the second, Tnt |
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#46
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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 Well as I have been reading the various post, and realizing, how many times I expect I was playing tag with the grim reaper, I thought of two particular incidents that got my attention. The first, during College, I was driving an ambulance to pay the bills. On one particular job, I was transporting a shell shock patient from WW2, down to FT. Sill for treatment. Now on the way down there, there were signs that warned you " Do Not Stop, No Parking", and "Don't drive into the Smoke". Seems that they did tank maneuvers out there, and would drive the big 70 ton tanks right across the road under cover of smoke, and going hell bent for leather. Only a short time previous they had an incident where some cars where crushed by a tank while waiting for the smoke to clear. Anyway as I was driving my way down to the fort hospital, there was alot of smoke this particular trip, and my passenger was getting very agitated, probably had something to do with flashbacks. At some point, he worked his restraints loose, and decided he wanted to drive the ambulance. The only thing I had going for me was I exclusivily controlled the brake, and managed to throw the keys out the window. Then it was katy-bar-the-door, as to who was going to drive the ambulance. He was manaically strong is all I can say. We fought and rolled and wrestled from one end of the ambulance to the other and back! Hitting and scraping and biting like I had never fought. Out there in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden the smoke surrounded the ambulance so thick you could not see 10 feet out from the window. Then I heard the tanks going by a 50 to 70 mph. so close you could reach out and touch them. Not that I tried, I was still to busy fighting the dude in the back of my ambulance. He was slowly wearing down though, and I don't know whether it was my youth or the fact that my adrenaline meter red lined, but I finally got him back in the wheelchair with restraints doubled, and if they were too tight, I don't know if at that point I really cared. I crawled out of the ambulance, with my knees knocking, and found the keys. The whole time the tanks are still going by me, and I to this day don't know how they missed us. I got going down the road, as soon as I could and got out of there. Got him to the hosbital, treated or whatever, and got him back to OKC to the VA hospital there. Turns out, they were evaluating him to go home, after what, 30 years in the hospital. I don't know why they had to send him 60 miles down to FT Sill, but they did. As I got back, and was unloading him out of the ambulance, his wife, who had been supposedly waiting for him all those years, met us with a shotgun. She shot him dead, point blank, right there in front of me in my wheelchair, not a foot from where I was standing, and then shot herself to death as well. Seems from a note we found, that she did not want him coming home because it would mean the end of some sort of financial support that she got as long as he was in the VA Hospital. She figured she couldn't continue to live, so she might as well end it all. That was one messed up day, and the last day I drove the ambulance! Remembering the story, I think I will have to hold off on the second, Tnt |
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#47
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I once answered an ex-girlfriends question that "yes, those pants did make her ass look big" |
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#48
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John Fereira wrote:
I once answered an ex-girlfriends question that "yes, those pants did make her ass look big" And, you lived to tell of the tail. -- "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. |
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#49
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"John Fereira" wrote in message .. . I once answered an ex-girlfriends question that "yes, those pants did make her ass look big" LOL. |
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#50
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Frederick Burroughs wrote: John Fereira wrote: I once answered an ex-girlfriends question that "yes, those pants did make her ass look big" And, you lived to tell of the tail. Tail or tale? :-) -- Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe ---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.--- http://wilko.webzone.ru/ |
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