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+--- Thread: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? (/showthread.php?tid=252933)
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - DavidS - 02-15-2021
mikebw wrote:
I'm normally reasonably cautious, but it seems that cars make people behave differently at times, especially in their TEENS and 20s.
Driving an RWD vehicle with worn tires around a curve in the rain- too.
I did this driving home from a friend's house late one night when I was 17. It was in their neighborhood, and I ended up hitting a fire hydrant. Knocked it off it's base. I picked up the pieces of the front grille and bumper of my car, put them in the trunk, and drove on home. Water did not spray upward (like in cartoons), but it did flood the people's yard.
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - Dennis S - 02-15-2021
I walked around in a herd of 45 bison.
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - davester - 02-15-2021
Probably skydiving. This was back in the days before tandem jumping when you leapt out of the door solo (but with a static line to pull the ripcord). The danger was highlighted by the preceding intense full-day training course that trained us to go through various emergency maneuvers while plummeting towards the ground in the event that something went wrong. Also, there wasn't much time to execute those maneuvers because we jumped from 1200', which gives you only about 12 seconds before you splat.
Other than that, it was probably spending weeks at a time alone in a remote part of the Nevada desert conducting geologic mapping and sample collection for my dissertation research. I would at times find myself scaling a cliff in the middle of nowhere, wondering how many weeks it would take them to find my body. No GPS, sat phones, or even cell phones back then.
Then there was the time I was working on my dad's VW bug in the garage and accidentally pulled the fuel hose off the bottom of the gas tank, resulting a cascade of gasoline, right next to the gas WATER HEATER with live pilot light. We managed to quickly push the car out into the driveway. I honestly don't know how we didn't burn the house down.
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - NewtonMP2100 - 02-15-2021
....eating a......'Jaw breaker'......
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - N-OS X-tasy! - 02-15-2021
davester wrote:
Also, there wasn't much time to execute those maneuvers because we jumped from 1200', which gives you only about 12 seconds before you splat.
1200 feet? Holy shit! All the times I've jumped (tamdem), it was from at least 13,000 feet!
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - Lux Interior - 02-16-2021
mattkime wrote:
Probably slapping cars that got too close while cycling in nyc. Or maybe flipping off drivers. Or maybe just cycling in traffic in nyc.
Oh, wow. Shortly after I returned from living in France, I was out running and almost got hit by a car. They were making a right on red and looking left, while I approached from the right. When they saw an opening, they just went without clearing the baffles to their right.
I open hand slapped the back window as I flexed backward to avoid them. I saw this happen all the time in Paris. And on the highway, if you didn't keep to the left in the far-left lane when traffic was slow, motorcyclists would slap your roof.
As I ran along, I thought, "That wasn't such a good idea here. They might come back shooting."
They didn't. Or they couldn't find me.
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - Ca Bob - 02-16-2021
Used a lot of radioactive phosphorus back in grad school. Like 25 millicuries at a time. Didn't seem to have much effect and its been a lot of decades. I suspect that the 17 years of playing rugby and the 150 or so open water dives were actually more dangerous. Driving in Boston. Going downhill in the original Ford Explorer on a gravely dirt road in the Death Valley area and the slightly top-heavy thing got out of control with sway, and probably nobody else around for 25 miles, but I didn't flip.
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - Kate - 02-16-2021
Well in the 60s, as a sweet young thing, I hitch hiked frequently up and down the California coast, to Missouri and back, from San Francisco to New Mexico and back, and so much more . . .
Kate
Re: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? - davester - 02-16-2021
N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=davester]
Also, there wasn't much time to execute those maneuvers because we jumped from 1200', which gives you only about 12 seconds before you splat.
1200 feet? Holy shit! All the times I've jumped (tamdem), it was from at least 13,000 feet!
When you're a novice jumping solo, too high an altitude means that you can drift far off target because your chute deploys after about 4 seconds of free fall. That, and the fuel/pilot cost of climbing to 13,000', is why they have you jump from so low. They don't want you coming down in a river, or on a highway, or on top of a building.