I don't get scared by events. I've been shot at, didn't scare me. Woke up in the hospital after moped accident, never worried. Harassed by border guards hundreds of miles from anything resembling civilization, didn't fret.
I generally get freaked out by a noise in the woods type thing.
About 10 years or so ago I was a huge fan mountain biking. Did some competitions, traveled around the country to the best trails...whatever. Anyways, in this time I decided to leave the world as I knew it and travel around the country for a year (long story...another thread perhaps) with nothing but my VW campervan, my bike and my dog 7.
So, I was camping in Canyonlands National Park (outside of Moab) for a few weeks, when I decided to take a bike trip to The Rim. You see, Canyonlands are basically a series of very high buttes carved over time by the Green River. There are 3 vertical levels: The Top (atop the buttes), The Rim (the edge of the desert floor) that eventually drops vertically to The River's Edge. From The Top to The Rim is around a 1200 ft. drop, then another 600 or so ft. drop from that to The River.
Anyways, I was feeling spunky after a good breakfast, and decided to take my bike down the switchbacks to The Rim plateau. It's mostly a 4WD trail, but I decided to haul ass for about 8 hours straight along the trail. Great fun, let me tell you. No more beautiful place on Earth. But, of course, reality comes a knocking and I realize I'm that many hours away from my drop-in point.
Shit.
There was no person within miles. I started to see the shadow of the sun move quite quickly across the land. I knew for a fact I was screwed. The desert at night is cold and unfriendly, and I sure as hell wasn't going to find out what vile creatures came out in a few hours. In case I didn't make it, I wrote a synopsis of the day's events in my journal...said some quick goodbyes...and started a mild panic attack.
I biked for a few minutes and saw a stream bed in the sand that came down from The Top. For some reason unknown I followed the bed to it's source at the bottom of the plateau...looked up...and started climbing. I had climbed a few rock faces in my life, so this was a little OK for a while. The water had seemingly carved out nice little sets of nooks and crannys that were fairly easy to navigate back and forth to. Piece of cake...
...until I got about half way up. The nooks went away. The crannys disappeared. 600 ft. to go and I was faced with...ledges. That's the point where I was really scared. The sun had already passed over the top of the plateau, and its long shadow was traveling *very* fast towards me. Luckily, the ledges were only between 8-12 feet above another. Some I climbed to, others I had to throw my bike up to, then crawl up.
Long story short...I obviously made it. It was dark by the time I crossed over the lip, but I made it. That experience was by far the scariest I've ever had and ever hope to.
Things that happen to me, don't affect me one way or the other. That's not to say that instinct won't take over on occasion. But I wouldn't call that being scared. More of a reflex than anything.
Come to find out that viral meningitis is the one you don't die from. That's bacterial meningitis. My wife now delights in the fact that she put a good scare into me and made me call 911 for her
Couple summers ago I was driving on a four lane highway (each direction) here and was almost run off the road by a semi. In order to avoid getting hit, I swerved, but at 65+ mph, I had to immediately swerve back into the lane again to avoid going in a ditch. At that point my car started fish-tailing and it went through two cycles, one of which my car ended up pointing straight under the semi before I was able to regain more control. Thought I was going under the trailer / end up roadkill. Scared the crap out of me.
Yup. My Mom was in the right lane poking down the highway in the rain. Next thing she knows she just spinning. Winds up backwards in the ditch on the right ... with a Town Car also going backwards coming at her. She hits the deck, no "boom", but after all the crunching glass/plastic/metal she gets out and looks at it. Town car is on top of hers with the rear wheel poking in the driver's window.
Maybe not the scariest moment of my life, but one of the scarier ones was when I was driving my brother to school one morning. It was snowing very hard and it had been snowing all last night so the plows were out and the visibility was bad. I'm in my family's oldest car so it doesn't have very good climate control and before long, the wipers are frozen and have to be cleaned off before they can do anything. My brother says he'll get out and clean the wipers off, so I pull over and let him get going. Then I hear something behind me and look in the rear view mirror. A snowplow coming right for us! It was like a scene from an action movie, really. I yelled at my brother to get in the car and as soon as he was in I started it up and drove off as quick as I could manage. I'm guessing it was about 50 feet behind us by the time I got going.
Actually, the adrenaline rush from it outweighed the scariness of it. I wasn't particularly scared during the incident, partly because I assumed the snowplow would probably see me and avoid me. Afterwards, with my brother and I both catching our breaths, we just looked at each other and started laughing. It was actually quite a refreshing experience. When I look back on the situation, I rarely think "I could have died." I'm more likely to think, "Oh my god that was cool!!!"
One time while running iMovie and using GraphicConverter to play a currupt .GIF at the same time. I got a system crash message. I thought I lost all my entire Mp3 collection for sure, thank god it rebooted fine.
Ok was this supposed to be a serious thread? I'm sorry. Well I walked into my fathers bedroom one day while he was sleeping, i tried to wake him up several times but he wasnt responding. I dont know why the horrible thought popped into my head but i freaked me out. My legs litteraly weak in the knees it scared me so much but then he woke up. I felt like an idiot.
That would be kissing my crying wife just outside the operating theatre before they wheeled me in for some fairly drastic open-heart surgery 4 years ago. I wasn't entirely convinced I'd see her again.I'm sure i'd have felt much worse if i wasn't under such heavy sedation. ( Thanks be to Spinal Tap )
i've had a few scary moments. i can't think of any of the big ones (thank you, severe mental disorder, for blocking those out). one that was pretty recent, and not so big, comes to mind though. like all my problems, and that flying monkey in the corner over there, it was 90% in my head.
i decided to get a tattoo. so, being the geek that i am, i of course read about them on the web first. one of my fears was how much it hurts. and i wanted to read, "it dont hert at all. you dont even feel it." they, of course, don't say that. they say, "it does hurt. but not a lot." i dont have a great threshold for pain (particularly pain i could avoid, or effectively self-inflict), so it i didn' much like that. so i get up my courage (aka: i smoke a j), and head over to the tatt place. as the dood picks up the needle, i ask how much it hurts. he said, "honestly. it does hurt. but not a lot. the important thing is to breath." so i hold my breath, grit my teeth and let him go at it. it really wasn't so bad. there definitely is some pain there, but not nearly as much as i had built up in me head. and after a few minutes, i barely noticed, but for the fact that i was told to keep my arm still. breathing normally actually helps. by the by, its a pretty boss jolly roger ("skull and cross bones").
of course, thats not the end of the story. the old lady and i have a rough relationship. she's very closed minded on a lot of things, and i had never thought of mentioning the tatt to her before hand. but, as i walked home, with every block closer i got, i kept thinking she was going to totally flip out. so i'm strategizing the best way to tell this to her, without her berating me, or kicking me out. if this thing does go south, i got nowhere to sleep tonight. of course, it would be best if i just tell her flat out, i figured. "hey, i got this thing on my arm, its there forever, and there aint much can be done about it now." but, i thought, maybe i could just hide it from her. maybe she'd never find out. of course, that aint gonna happen. my sisters gossip like old ladies in a hair salon and they are bound to tell her. so i get home, and i say, "sit down, cuz i have some fairly surprising and maybe disturbing news. its nothing bad, but you probably won't like it, and you may get upset over it." she almost immediately guesses, "you got a tattoo." i was like, "wow. yea." she laughs. life goes on. i think entirely too pessimisticly.
About ten years ago I hydroplaned a Jeep Cherokee on I-59 at 75 mph, hit dry road and shot into the median, where the first tree I hit tore the front half of the truck off and spun us around. The second hit us on the side and pushed everything about 10 inches to the right and meant that seat-belts wouldn't unlock.
That second and a half between hydroplaning and hitting the tree sucked, since the only thing that I could think as we were hurtling sideways along the interstate was "We're going to hit dry road and flip over a thousand times."
Comments
Originally posted by PBG3
Just curious, what was the scariest moment of your life?
Welcome on board PBG3.
Perhaps you might like to get the ball rolling so that some of us more older Ai folk can have some amusement.
8)
I generally get freaked out by a noise in the woods type thing.
Originally posted by bunge
.........I generally get freaked out by a noise in the woods type thing...........
I'd put such noises down to trolls or lost garden gnomes.
About 10 years or so ago I was a huge fan mountain biking. Did some competitions, traveled around the country to the best trails...whatever. Anyways, in this time I decided to leave the world as I knew it and travel around the country for a year (long story...another thread perhaps) with nothing but my VW campervan, my bike and my dog 7.
So, I was camping in Canyonlands National Park (outside of Moab) for a few weeks, when I decided to take a bike trip to The Rim. You see, Canyonlands are basically a series of very high buttes carved over time by the Green River. There are 3 vertical levels: The Top (atop the buttes), The Rim (the edge of the desert floor) that eventually drops vertically to The River's Edge. From The Top to The Rim is around a 1200 ft. drop, then another 600 or so ft. drop from that to The River.
Anyways, I was feeling spunky after a good breakfast, and decided to take my bike down the switchbacks to The Rim plateau. It's mostly a 4WD trail, but I decided to haul ass for about 8 hours straight along the trail. Great fun, let me tell you. No more beautiful place on Earth. But, of course, reality comes a knocking and I realize I'm that many hours away from my drop-in point.
Shit.
There was no person within miles. I started to see the shadow of the sun move quite quickly across the land. I knew for a fact I was screwed. The desert at night is cold and unfriendly, and I sure as hell wasn't going to find out what vile creatures came out in a few hours. In case I didn't make it, I wrote a synopsis of the day's events in my journal...said some quick goodbyes...and started a mild panic attack.
I biked for a few minutes and saw a stream bed in the sand that came down from The Top. For some reason unknown I followed the bed to it's source at the bottom of the plateau...looked up...and started climbing. I had climbed a few rock faces in my life, so this was a little OK for a while. The water had seemingly carved out nice little sets of nooks and crannys that were fairly easy to navigate back and forth to. Piece of cake...
...until I got about half way up. The nooks went away. The crannys disappeared. 600 ft. to go and I was faced with...ledges. That's the point where I was really scared. The sun had already passed over the top of the plateau, and its long shadow was traveling *very* fast towards me. Luckily, the ledges were only between 8-12 feet above another. Some I climbed to, others I had to throw my bike up to, then crawl up.
Long story short...I obviously made it. It was dark by the time I crossed over the lip, but I made it. That experience was by far the scariest I've ever had and ever hope to.
7 was happy to see me.
Things that happen to me, don't affect me one way or the other. That's not to say that instinct won't take over on occasion. But I wouldn't call that being scared. More of a reflex than anything.
Now she's all "Dr Phil" on me
Actually, the adrenaline rush from it outweighed the scariness of it. I wasn't particularly scared during the incident, partly because I assumed the snowplow would probably see me and avoid me. Afterwards, with my brother and I both catching our breaths, we just looked at each other and started laughing. It was actually quite a refreshing experience. When I look back on the situation, I rarely think "I could have died." I'm more likely to think, "Oh my god that was cool!!!"
Ok was this supposed to be a serious thread? I'm sorry. Well I walked into my fathers bedroom one day while he was sleeping, i tried to wake him up several times but he wasnt responding. I dont know why the horrible thought popped into my head but i freaked me out. My legs litteraly weak in the knees it scared me so much but then he woke up. I felt like an idiot.
Originally posted by Scott
Now she's all "Dr Phil" on me
you mean she says all diets, and diet book/products are a scam... only to release her own a few weeks later?
i decided to get a tattoo. so, being the geek that i am, i of course read about them on the web first. one of my fears was how much it hurts. and i wanted to read, "it dont hert at all. you dont even feel it." they, of course, don't say that. they say, "it does hurt. but not a lot." i dont have a great threshold for pain (particularly pain i could avoid, or effectively self-inflict), so it i didn' much like that. so i get up my courage (aka: i smoke a j), and head over to the tatt place. as the dood picks up the needle, i ask how much it hurts. he said, "honestly. it does hurt. but not a lot. the important thing is to breath." so i hold my breath, grit my teeth and let him go at it. it really wasn't so bad. there definitely is some pain there, but not nearly as much as i had built up in me head. and after a few minutes, i barely noticed, but for the fact that i was told to keep my arm still. breathing normally actually helps. by the by, its a pretty boss jolly roger ("skull and cross bones").
of course, thats not the end of the story. the old lady and i have a rough relationship. she's very closed minded on a lot of things, and i had never thought of mentioning the tatt to her before hand. but, as i walked home, with every block closer i got, i kept thinking she was going to totally flip out. so i'm strategizing the best way to tell this to her, without her berating me, or kicking me out. if this thing does go south, i got nowhere to sleep tonight. of course, it would be best if i just tell her flat out, i figured. "hey, i got this thing on my arm, its there forever, and there aint much can be done about it now." but, i thought, maybe i could just hide it from her. maybe she'd never find out. of course, that aint gonna happen. my sisters gossip like old ladies in a hair salon and they are bound to tell her. so i get home, and i say, "sit down, cuz i have some fairly surprising and maybe disturbing news. its nothing bad, but you probably won't like it, and you may get upset over it." she almost immediately guesses, "you got a tattoo." i was like, "wow. yea." she laughs. life goes on. i think entirely too pessimisticly.
Originally posted by thuh Freak
snip
Originally posted by der Kopf
...a Mexican cutie...
How it got here, I haven't a Clue-e-e."
Originally posted by Aquafire
Welcome on board PBG3.
Perhaps you might like to get the ball rolling so that some of us more older Ai folk can have some amusement.
8)
I've been here since '98, my post count got deleted after the big blackout.
That second and a half between hydroplaning and hitting the tree sucked, since the only thing that I could think as we were hurtling sideways along the interstate was "We're going to hit dry road and flip over a thousand times."
And then he let me off.. PHEWWWW