Risks you didn't know were risks

[BB27]

Used to do a lot of climbing, ice, rock and general mountaineering. Took a couple of nasty falls and am still here.

 

As the saying goes, there are old climbers, and there are bold climbers, but there aren't any old, bold climbers.

[DrFishfinder]

When I was in Spain, I went to this Ranch House outside of Toledo. There was a big patio with a short stone wall (maybe 2 ft high) enclosing the patio. Thick trees all around the edge. I stood on the stone wall to get a better look at something in the distance & take some pics. Walked back & forth along the wall trying to get a better shot & finally gave up.

 

About an hour later, driving away, I looked back up at the ranch house and realized there was about a 75 foot sheer drop, off that 2 foot stone wall I was standing on. I never realized it because the trees had grown right up against it. What I thought were maybe 6 foot high trees were actually the tops of 75 foot tall trees.

[erynthered]

I was putting in a above ground fish pond on our new pool deck, cleaning it and filling it up with water then setting in the electric pump. Well the pump wanst working, so I steped in the water to pick up the pump to check it out. Thats when I started to get electricuted. Good fourtune for me that we had the electrical outlets on the pool deck set for emergency shut off. I steped out of the pond un pluged the pump and pulled it out, sure enough, a small piece of electrical tape had peeled away showing wires.

 

Got zapped for about 15 seconds. Scared the shiit out of me!!

[BuffaloBill]

I've probably got the wimpiest story here, but this is probably the closest I was to dying.

 

I had a pretty bad cold for a few days when I was 15 and one of the symptoms was heavy sneezing. After taking a shower, I stepped out to dry myself off. As I approached the bathroom counter to brush my teeth/shave/whatever, a sneeze suddenly came upon me and I sneezed so hard that I smacked my forehead against the iron, which my Mom had left out. Knocked me out for about 5 minutes, and I only came to after my family found me lying naked on the bathroom tile with blood seeping out of my head.

 

I had a fracture in my cranium and it gave me a very bad concussion...I got bad headaches for a while, but those have gone away. I still have a trianlge-shaped dent in my forehead.

 

 

Knowing that you came out of this OK I can't help but laugh at the mental image of the situation. It sounds like a chain of events that could be worked into a good comedy.

 

As for me when I was about 9 years old my brother and I came up with a brilliant idea to disassemble 22 bullets to see what was inside. We added to the stupidity by deciding to light the gunpowder (keep in mind it was a very small quantity) with the box of bullets nearby. Fortunately, nothing came of it but not a bright activity.

 

I was also very lucky another time in my teens when I decided to use gas to ignite a brush pile that needed to be burned. When I threw the match on it the pile flashed. I jumped back and actually knocked the gas can over in the process. How I walked away with nothing but the hair on one arm singed off can be explained only through luck. I probably would not have died but I could have been seriously burned.

[Doc]

I was putting in a above ground fish pond on our new pool deck, cleaning it and filling it up with water then setting in the electric pump. Well the pump wanst working, so I steped in the water to pick up the pump to check it out. Thats when I started to get electricuted. Good fourtune for me that we had the electrical outlets on the pool deck set for emergency shut off. I steped out of the pond un pluged the pump and pulled it out, sure enough, a small piece of electrical tape had peeled away showing wires.

 

Got zapped for about 15 seconds. Scared the shiit out of me!!

I got a swingset for my boys that has a slide on it. I put a pool at the end of the slide, filled it with water, put a water pump in it, and ran a hose to the top of the slide, to make a water slide. It was plugged into a GFCI outlet. It worked great and the kids used it a few time, but I wasn't sure I wanted to chance anything really bad happening so we haven't used it in years.

[ExiledInIllinois]

The bear that stole your pikanik basket sounds smarter than the average bear

 

Oh... They are pretty smart... Especially the black bears on Mt. Marcy... They seem to follow the rope of the bear bag and go for the knot! As an extra precaution, I would stand on another's shoulders to get the knot extra high! Boy that is a fiasco... But it beats not having food...

[BB27]

Oh... They are pretty smart... Especially the black bears on Mt. Marcy... They seem to follow the rope of the bear bag and go for the knot! As an extra precaution, I would stand on another's shoulders to get the knot extra high! Boy that is a fiasco... But it beats not having food...

Yeah, the bears around Mt. Marcy are really smart. I remember back in the late 80's / early 90's when I was hiking/camping/climbing in the high peaks area that you couldn't use a white rope to hang your food because they would find it immediately. A black rope would be left alone, but every white rope in the backcountry camping area near Lake Colden (flowed lands) would be gone in the morning. Eventually the bears figured out that people were using black rope too!

 

Bear proof containers are the way to go! Out west in a lot of the backcountry campsites they have large bear proof storage containers that all the campers can use. Seems to work really well.

[Rubes]

I was at a Sabres game once as a kid, with my stepfather. We had seats pretty close to the ice, somewhere behind and off to the side of the penalty boxes. During the game, a player shot the puck around behind the net, but it was up high on the tall glass. Since the glass along the rest of the ice is shorter, the puck eventually flew around the glass and off into the stands. It ended up hitting my stepfather in the shoulder. It was a rocket, and it hurt him pretty good.

 

If I had been sitting in his seat instead, that puck would have nailed me right in the side of the head. Game over.

[Terry Tate]

I can relate to the snorkeling story. I was 34, in Maui on my honeymoon. Snorkeling about 75-100 yds offshore near some coral. I thought it would be cool to check out the coral up close. I got caught in some waves, undertow or whatever? i kept getting sucked over the sharp coral..could not get my bearings, and started to panic. I had a hard time getting to the surface to catch some air while at the same time trying to avoid scraping up against coral. I freaked, thought i was gonna drown but managed to pull out of there. When i got to shore it was so serene and i tried not to upset my wife so i just acted all cool like nothing happened.

Sounds like a riptide. Waves come in to the beach, water recedes back into the sea. But sometimes it channels together, and it's force is not one you will escape by swimming against it toward the beach. Very quickly you will find yourself far from the beach and getting further out at an alarming rate. You have to swim parallel to the beach to escape the riptide, then you will be able to return to the beach. Beaches are nice. Oceans can be scary.

[coloradobillsfan]

ive done some pretty risky (no, stupid) things with fire over the years. among the best

 

- CO2 cartridge. probably the loudest explosion ive ever heard in my life. completely disintegrated a chest-high fire such that absolutely nothing was left. nothing.

 

- Anti-aircraft bullet, about 4 inches long with the casing. we were 'smart' enough to wait behind a large boulder, but when it went off we could hear it ricochet off of trees and rocks for the next 4-5 seconds, no exaggeration.

 

- Grolsch bottle. empty but sealed with their famous stopper. it exploded glass in every direction but by the grace of our guardian angels it didnt hit any of us, except for one piece - the ceramic top which hit my friend square in the chest. it was attached to a very pointed shard of glass.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Yeah, the bears around Mt. Marcy are really smart. I remember back in the late 80's / early 90's when I was hiking/camping/climbing in the high peaks area that you couldn't use a white rope to hang your food because they would find it immediately. A black rope would be left alone, but every white rope in the backcountry camping area near Lake Colden (flowed lands) would be gone in the morning. Eventually the bears figured out that people were using black rope too!

 

Bear proof containers are the way to go! Out west in a lot of the backcountry campsites they have large bear proof storage containers that all the campers can use. Seems to work really well.

 

 

I remember one ranger saying they named one: "Cliff"... "Tie your line extra high"... We were camped that night and somebody heard something move... We all joked like he was paranoid... Went to shine the light and here was this bear on all fours growling and scraping at a tree... Thank God for getting on somebody's shoulders! Were heard clanking of pots and pans down stream and found out that they were raided... Went up a small hill in the morning to find all their sh*t strewn all over the place... Our's was in tact... Thank God some other hikers had "better and easier stuff" to get!

 

I never used bear proof containers... Wouldn't they get kicked around all over the place and get lost??

[PromoTheRobot]

I used to blow stuff up with M-80s and played on railroad tracks.

 

PTR

[udonkey]

I've got a ton, and almost all involve alcohol in some way or another. Fortunately, I've grown up a lot in the past ~8 years or so.

 

A couple that stand out:

 

I was working a summer job my second year of college, delivering ice. Absolutely terrible job - I seemed to get routes that had me going to all of the really rough "carryouts" in terrible parts of Cincinnati (crackheads asking me for money after some shop owner just paid me in cash, etc.). While others had routes where they could unload entire skids of ice into a huge cooler, most of my customers were needing 20-30 at a time, which meant that I was out on the road a LOT longer each day. Typically worked 12-13 hour days that summer.

 

I got home one night around 9pm, exhausted. A girl that I grew up with (and always had a huge crush on, still do) was going to college around 3 hours to the east of me and started sending me text messages that it was her 21st birthday that night and that I should drive over to hang out. I resisted, but really wanted to. Called around and found a couple of really spontaneous friends and convinced them that there would be drunk girls at the end of our journey, so we hopped in the car around 11:30pm, heading east.

 

We managed to shave some time off of the trip by excessively speeding and made it to the bar just in time for last call. Needless to say, serious binge drinking began. To my dismay, the birthday girl was nowhere to be found, but several of her friends were still out, so we drank with them. Ended up back at the birthday girl's apartment to find her passed out, so the remaining soldiers sat around and drank the rest of the alcohol in her apartment (including some incredibly strong jello shots). I can't really say what happened the rest of the night, as I definitely blacked out from trying to play catch up. My next recollection was waking up on the back seat of my car, both of my friends in the front seat, parked on the shoulder of the highway, about 10 miles west of the college town that we had been in.

 

Part of me was proud that I was smart enough to give my keys to someone else, but I guess I wasn't in the right mindset to realize that my friends were equally intoxicated. Fortunately, someone was smart enough to realize that it was a bad idea to drive home.

 

 

The other, also involving a girl. A buddy's kid sister (she was about 22) had just moved to town and we had reconnected as I was one of the only people in town that she knew. I went out with some friends and was having a good time. Towards the end of the night and closing time, quite drunk (not driving), I started getting text messages from her. The bar that I was at was on her way home, so she told me not to leave until she got there. She stopped, was more than flirtatious, and insisted that I go home with her.

 

Without thinking, I totally blew off my friends and left with her...OBVIOUSLY. So we get back to her apartment, I'm thinking that things are going my way, and we walk inside her apartment to find some random dude sitting on her couch. I initially had a huge WTF moment, but an even bigger WTF moment when she walked over to him, straddled him, and started making out.

 

Now, I don't know what her intentions were, but I wasn't really interested in finding out, so I took the first opportunity to sneak out the front door. What I hadn't mentioned yet is that this night had a wind chill of around -10 degrees and I hadn't brought a coat because it would've been a hassle at the bar - I wasn't going to be outside, right?

 

I started walking (I was a few miles south of the Ohio River in Kentucky - I lived about 5 miles north of the river). Walked a couple of miles to the bar that I was at, all closed up and everyone was gone, including staff, so I kept walking.

 

Called my buddy that was originally going to drive me home - by this point, he was about 30 minutes away and a bit pissy that I just bailed on him (rightfully so). I was so cold that I had to switch the phone from hand to hand, because my hands were literally freezing in the position to hold the phone, so I had to keep peeling back my fingers and putting the phone in the other hand. At this point, I was pleading with him to pick me up - it's now ~3am on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere. Sadly, I could see the Cincinnati skyline, but no one around to help me. I was crossing a bridge that went over some Ohio River backwaters and my level of desperation (and drunkenness) almost led me to jump...I recall telling my friend on the phone that it was nice knowing him.

 

Fortunately, I kept walking and 10-15 minutes later managed to flag down an off-duty cab driver. His lights were off and he was heading home, but I was able to convince him to drive me home. I had him stop at an ATM on the way and ended up giving him a $30+ tip. He probably deserved more, as the guy probably saved my life.

 

I now live in Florida, but I learned my lesson in Ohio - I don't leave the house in the winter without a jacket and gloves, no matter how dorky or burdensome they are when I ended up at my destination.

 

 

Sorry for the novel...

[BB27]

 

I remember one ranger saying they named one: "Cliff"... "Tie your line extra high"... We were camped that night and somebody heard something move... We all joked like he was paranoid... Went to shine the light and here was this bear on all fours growling and scraping at a tree... Thank God for getting on somebody's shoulders! Were heard clanking of pots and pans down stream and found out that they were raided... Went up a small hill in the morning to find all their sh*t strewn all over the place... Our's was in tact... Thank God some other hikers had "better and easier stuff" to get!

 

I never used bear proof containers... Wouldn't they get kicked around all over the place and get lost??

The big containers out west were the size of a small dumpster with shelves. They were made of steel and were attached to the ground. No way a bear was moving that thing. Although, a reallly determined brown bear might have a shot.

[udonkey]

Damn, looks like another thread has fallen victim to my thread killing abilities.