Dangerous/Stupid Things You Did Alone..

[ndcent]

Saw this thread on my ADV riding forum and I thought it was pretty interesting, thought you guys might have some good stories?

Was there ever a time when you did something stupid/dangerous/foolish where you could have been in serious trouble?

I remember when I was maybe 25 (12-13 years ago) I was at a sport touring rally in Oregon as a guest through my then employment with the American Motorcyclist Association. The hosts were gracious to loan me a Suzuki SV650 for the week and one afternoon after seminars I went for a solo ride. I'm an accomplished off-road rider (A-level enduro) and wanted to push that pig around a bit. I ended up exploring some mountain roads, got around a gate, kept going gravel turned to dirt turned to trail.

Found myself down some seriously rocky downhills I knew for certain I couldn't get back up with the 80/20 tires on that SV650. I was scared. The trail kept getting tighter, clearly no one had traversed this terrain in some time. Then a good size log crossing. Then more tight trail. The sun was going down soon and I was seriously freaked out like I was going to spend the night in the woods. Had basically nothing in terms of supplies on the bike, no GPS or smart phone at the time. Just kept going and eventually popped out over a drainage ditch and onto a wide gravel road which I knew would lead back to civilization. Thanks my lucky stars. Could have seriously injured myself or even gotten lost.

Learned a lot from that, embarrassing for sure but I've grown because of it.

What say you T4R? Share the story you lived to tell.

 

[Hepar]

Are we talking off-road related or in general? Because my general list is LONG. I did some pretty stupid sh*t in my youth. SO glad there was no internet around to document it.

 

[Net4n6]

I am not going to admit it in the public forums:ybrick::hatsoff:

 

[ndcent]

Are we talking off-road related or in general? Because my general list is LONG. I did some pretty stupid sh*t in my youth. SO glad there was no internet around to document it.

How about the most interesting of both. Haha.

 

[Hepar]

How about the most interesting of both. Haha.

Well, the one that stands out the most in my mind was when I first got really into rock climbing. The guys I first met were these older local old-school climbers who I definitely looked up to. Big wall trad climbers most of them. They kept telling me I should do a long free solo and pushed me to do one that they said was super easy. Me being young and not wanting to look weak totally caved to the pressure and did it.

Why was it the dumbest thing? Because if any of you have seen the recent movie Free Solo, it was nothing like that. I went and climbed it completely unprepared. At around 300ft (well past the point of no return) I realized I was completely over my head and still had around 500ft to go. Somehow I was able to keep my sh*t together and finish the entire line.

If you could go back in time and redo that same scenario 10 times, I'd say the odds are really high that I would have died 8 to 9 times out of 10.

 

[ndcent]

I tried rock climbing once on a 15 day backpacking and rafting trip.

Not for me. Horrifying to be up a wall and not know where your next move is. Respect.

 

[Ed_C]

One time I allegedly sold 60x pills of a controlled substance to which I have a prescription for & a half ounce or less of marijuana to an undercover cop that turned out to be a setup.

They seized my 4Runner on grounds of using the vehicle to transport substantial amounts of drugs involved.





:laugh:

 

[Hepar]

I tried rock climbing once on a 15 day backpacking and rafting trip.

Not for me. Horrifying to be up a wall and not no where your next move is. Respect.

I feel like it was more the opposite of respect. In my view it was a complete disrespect for the sport (and the dangers that are involved) as well as to myself and those I know. It's one of the few things I feel ashamed that I did and I have only told a couple people I know that I even did it. Only reason I said anything here is that this forum is largely an anonymous space.

On paper it sounds like something totally badass to say you did. But the reality when you really reflect on it is quite different. And again, that is my specific situation and not free soloing as a whole.

One time I allegedly sold 60x pills of a controlled substance to which I have a prescription for & a half ounce or less of marijuana to an undercover cop that turned out to be a setup.

They seized my 4Runner on grounds of using the vehicle to transport substantial amounts of drugs involved.





:laugh:

ound:

 

[JAXJeremy]

This happened to me years ago, as embarrassing as it is, I share my experience because not only was it dumb, it could have gotten me killed. Typically whenever I work on my rig I almost always make a habit of chocking the tires (especially if I'm working underneath it or doing anything with the wheels), but I got in a rush, fast forward, was in the driveway disconnecting the drive shaft on my Bronco (37 inch tires) to work on the transfer case...Got the last bolt off the drive shaft, it dropped and my rig started rolling. I was laying right near one of the rear tires, fortunately, the front wheels were pointed towards the side of the driveway. Truck rolls forward about 3 feet and stopped when it hit the edge of the driveway, the tire just about to roll over my hip.

Scared me so bad that now I actually double check to make sure I have the tires chocked before doing any work..

 

[RandyDaytona]

In 1989, I was a member of one of the Marine Corps’s first small boat units. We were attending a basic coxswain course taught by the Dutch Royal Marine Corps and the Special Operations Training Group. Our training schedule was brutal: six days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day off Onslow Beach in NC, January through April. Cold, wet and tired all the time.

One day, on our day off, it was one of those sunny deceptively-warm North Carolina days in March where the temperature got up to about 65°. I say “deceptive” because the water temperature was still pretty cold. But being 23 years old and feeling adventurous (with a healthy amount of beer in our systems), my buddy and I decided to put on our mustang suits and swim out to the Alpha Buoy, which is a gigantic red and white buoy that marks the entrance to the sea lanes. We passed by it during training every day and thought it would be cool to get a closer look.

We started swimming at about 1:00 in the afternoon, an extra beer in every pocket that would hold one . The swim seemed to be taking longer than we expected. What we had failed to notice was that the tide was going out. It pulled us past and behind the buoy so that the beach was on the other side and we were being pulled out to sea from behind. When we figured this out, we started swimming for all we were worth and finally managed to get to the thing. Exhausted, it took about half an hour of hanging on to the side to muster the strength to get up on it. Imagine a 55 gallon drum that’s about 6 feet in diameter at the top. At one point, our buzz now gone and freezing in the wind, we decided to head back to shore only to have the current push us right back up against the buoy. We managed to get back on top and were starting to get scared. We had no hats, no gloves, and just dive booties on our feet. A Mustang suit is great when you’re in the water, but is essentially a wet snowmobile suit when you get out. We figured we would wait until the tide started going back in, but after an hour or so sitting in that wind we were in no condition to swim anywhere.

Unbeknownst to us, someone on the beach had watched us swim out and not come back. They had called the sheriffs department.

At about 11 o’clock that night, huddling together for warmth, a huge light shot out of the dark and someone on a loudspeaker asked if we were OK. It was a Coast Guard Cutter. Not a small rescue boat, but a freaking full-on ship!

They got us on board, stuck some IVs into us because we were badly dehydrated, and put us in some warm bunks. They took us back to port, though I have no idea what port it was. We were pretty out of it. A sheriffs deputy then took us back to our barracks at Camp Lejeune.

The next morning, we had to go before the battalion commander. His name was Colonel Ray “E-tool” Smith. He supposedly got his nickname for having a number of confirmed kills in Vietnam with an E-tool, or entrenching tool (a folding shovel). I don’t know if that was true or not, but we thought it was at the time and were scared shitless. He showed us a fax from the commandant of the Coast Guard to the commandant of the Marine Corps, subject: “two swimmers in distress.” It was kind of a “ha-ha, we pulled your guys out of the shit” thing.

He wanted to know if we were drunk. At that time, it was a big deal to be involved and what the Marine Corps called an “alcohol-related incident.” We were too scared to admit that we have been drinking, and had fortunately ditched the beers we had left before the coast guard showed up. After telling us how stupid we were, the Colonel told us said he believed the Marines should be willing to take risks (just not stupid ones) and said he figured we had been punished enough.

To this day, there are probably still eight or nine full bottles of Miller Genuine Draft on the sea floor underneath the Onslow Beach Alpha Buoy.

Incidentally, years later while conducting an at-sea boarding of a fishing trawler near Dutch Harbor, Alaska, I fell overboard. The Coast Guard boat that we were working with came back behind the trawler and scooped me up. So technically I have been rescued at sea by the Coast Guard not once, but twice.

 

[mrblah]

I'm sure we can all guess what all the things you guys do alone and at night, after all danger is your middle name.

 

[Ray Dunakin]

Way back in 1978 or '79, I was camping and off-roading with my brothers and a friend in Anza-Borrego. It was summer, and we stopped at the mud caves in Arroyo Tapiado to have lunch and relax out of the sun for a while. I decided to take a little walk down the canyon, and brought along a 1-gallon canteen.

After a little ways, I turned to explore one of the small side canyons. I kept going up the canyon and eventually reached the top of the mesa. By this time I was getting pretty hot and running low on water.

I don't know what the cave's current condition is, but back in those days you could go all the way through the cave and come out on the mesa. So I came up with a "brilliant" plan. Rather than going all the way back the way I'd come, I would head over the upper end of the mud cave. Then I could just go through the cave to meet up with the rest of the gang, and avoid a long, hot walk.

The main problem I faced was the fact that I had not brought a flashlight with me. But I had a book of matches and figured I could use them for light to get through the worst areas. (I couldn't find anything flammable on the mesa that could be used as a torch.) This turned out to be much more difficult than I'd thought. But I no longer had any water and knew I couldn't get back the way I'd come without any.

The matches weren't lasting very long, and I was trying to let them burn down as far as possible. I got to an area where I had to walk along a ledge, barely lit by the dim glow of a dying match. The ledge ended and I had to step down to the lower level. This looked to be about a foot below the ledge. I stepped down, there was nothing there, and as the match burned out I fell sideways into the darkness.

AS I fell, the enormous stupidity of my plight raced through my mind. Despite having lots of outdoor experience in general and desert experience in particular, I had made several very foolish mistakes.

First, no one knew where I was. They only knew I'd gone out for a brief walk in the canyon.

Second, I kept pressing on after my water started running low. I should have turned back before then.

Three, if anyone went looking for me, the last place they'd ever look is in the very cave I had left!

Four, believing I could get through that long, twisted, uneven cave with only matches for light was beyond dumb.

Fortunately I only fell a few feet. But I landed hard and felt an excruciating pain in my lower back. I found out later that I'd actually cracked a vertebra.

I lay there on the ground, in the dark, gasping in pain for a while, and slowly began to find out whether I could move my legs or not. I was relieved to discover that I wasn't paralyzed. Gradually, I worked myself into a somewhat upright position, lit another match, and continued making my way through the cave. My already-slow progress was now much slower, and I would soon run out of matches.

My only hope was that one of the other guys would decide to come up the cave. Thank God, that's what happened, and of course they had flashlights.

In those days I had no health insurance and certainly couldn't afford anything out of pocket, so I had a long, painful recovery on my own. It wasn't until a few years later when I had X-rays for an unrelated issue, that I found out about the cracked vertebra.

What doesn't kill us may not make us stronger, but hopefully it at least makes us smarter.

.

 

[LandCruiser]

marriage

 

[Fern]

I accidentally launched off a 40 foot tall dune on a quad at night in Glamis. I stayed on and landed it, except I compounded the two lower bones in my right arm when I landed. The handlebars were bent down a few inches from the impact. I also broke my shoulder blade in half after the rear got too loose over the whoops going pretty fast, also in Glamis but on a CR500.

 

[mteolus]

Wasn't me, but pretty stupid.

YouTube

 

[Mudeprived]

This happened to me years ago, as embarrassing as it is, I share my experience because not only was it dumb, it could have gotten me killed. Typically whenever I work on my rig I almost always make a habit of chocking the tires (especially if I'm working underneath it or doing anything with the wheels), but I got in a rush, fast forward, was in the driveway disconnecting the drive shaft on my Bronco (37 inch tires) to work on the transfer case...Got the last bolt off the drive shaft, it dropped and my rig started rolling. I was laying right near one of the rear tires, fortunately, the front wheels were pointed towards the side of the driveway. Truck rolls forward about 3 feet and stopped when it hit the edge of the driveway, the tire just about to roll over my hip.

Scared me so bad that now I actually double check to make sure I have the tires chocked before doing any work..

I was working on my XJ about 8 years ago with the rear tires removed and the unibody rails on jack stands. I also had a jack under the axle to raise and lower for clearance. Rewind two hours and I was in the apartment eating and getting ready to go work on it when I JUST remembered to put on my hearing aids. I am fully deaf without them and like to wear them when in the parking lot to know when people are driving by but sometimes I forget. Fast forward two hours and I needed to drop the axle a bit for more clearance and I heard a creaking noise. I immediately rolled out from under the gas tank and the jeep slammed on the ground.

I would be crushed if I had forgotten my hearing aids. :wow:

I have had a fear of working under vehicles since that day and have a three stage safety setup. Jacks stands, wheel chocks, and tires slid under the crossmembers.