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Anyone here ever ride a barrel over Niagara Falls?


Dirty Dan Dawkins

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Or climbed a cell tower illegally or generally done anything dangerous, illegal or, well, stupid? If you don’t mind sharing....what’s your story?

Watching Woody the Woodpecker with the boys this morning.

Woody was at Niagara Falls

 

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Well, one time I took a half dozen of those really thing waste basket liners, the ones you see in offices lining the little 3 gallon waste baskets.  Filled one  (filled is relative, what with having to twist it and tie it off, so maybe about 1/3 full) with straight oxygen from the welding set.  Filled another with straight acetylene.  Filled the others with what I guesstimated to be 1/4 Oxy and 3/4 acetylene, another about half and half, and the last at 1/4 acetylene and 3/4 O2.  
Took some of those long fireplace matches.  Lit one, plunged it into the pure O2.  Burned real bright, but nothing special. 

Next was the 100% acetylene.  Big flare up and impressive flash and fireball, but it just burned as it exited the hole the match had made.   
Then I did the 25% acetylene/75% O2.  Plunged the lit match in and then sat there stunned by the concussion, looking at the match in my hand and wondering if any of the neighbors heard it.  
I cut the remaining bags open with my knife.  


 

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A Facebook find of an account of an Incredibly Bad Idea:
 

Why we shoot deer in the wild:
(A letter from someone who wants to remain anonymous, who farms, writes well and actually tried this)
I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up-- 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold.
The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope, and then received an education. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.
That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer-- no Chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.
A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.
I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.
Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when ..... I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head--almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.
It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.
That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp... I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -like a horse --strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.
This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.
Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.
I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope......to sort of even the odds!!
All these events are true so help me God...An Educated Farmer
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Summer 1971, 17 years old, Umpqua River, Oregon.  My brother and I had just finished shooting a really rough set of rapids on our inner tubes.  I proposed we do it again, body surfing.  So, we left our tubes and went back to the head of the rapids.  These are not ripples we're talking about.  This is green, sliding dives between car sized boulders.  We jumped in.  It was the most powerless and weak I have ever felt.  Impossible to properly describe.  Two lessons learned:

1.  The hardness of rock seems to increase with the cube of velocity.  I still shudder at the memory of those impacts.

2.  Eventually, you will quit and take your "last breath".  Me head broke the surface at the end of the set just as I took mine.

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I used to climb the towers in the power line right-of-ways.  We’d spend hours climbing around on them like a bunch of monkeys.

 

 I once climbed a really tall radio tower on a bet.  Money can make ya’ pretty stupid! I’m not really fond of heights!  I’m not too scared of them, but I can’t get comfortable when I’m way up off the ground.

 

The hundred bucks overrode my discomfort!

 

Nowadays, you can get the view I had of Nashville once in a while on the local FOX affiliate since they put a camera on that same tower!

 

It gets windy up there, sometimes!!

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There is a road in my town called  Bridge Lane. It's a little humpback bridge over railroad tracks. I was driving with some friends in my Dad's 1969 Ford LTD and I tried the bridge at 55mph. We jumped it. The guy in the back seat whacked his head on the roof pretty good. 

 

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2 hours ago, DocWard said:

I will take this time to invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

Me too. Best not discussed. 

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2 hours ago, DocWard said:

I will take this time to invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

 

Do you have to invoke the Fifth for each occurrence or can it work as a blanket statement?

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28 minutes ago, Cypress Sun said:

 

Do you have to invoke the Fifth for each occurrence or can it work as a blanket statement?

 

I'm going to hope a blanket statement works, or we may be here awhile.

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30 minutes ago, Ramblin Gambler said:

Funny, I know there's been plenty of times when I went "That was dumb, I'm lucky I survived" but I can't recall any of them easily. 

 

 

 

Some memories get repressed for our own sanity?

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7 hours ago, DocWard said:

I will take this time to invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

I’ll take the fifth now. I should have taken it when I told my wife what I did.

Never made that mistake again.
 

CJ

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1 hour ago, Cactus Jack Calder said:

I’ll take the fifth now. I should have taken it when I told my wife what I did.

Never made that mistake again.
 

CJ

yup - young once and not near as smart as we are now - youth is wasted on the young 

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I have done lots of crazy things for fun.
Climbed buildings.  
I have climbed power line towers. 
Jumped from cliffs into water. 
Canyon bombed on motorcycles (road racing)  
Split traffic at high speeds on the freeways of SoCal. 
I used to rock climb. Rappelling from heights was fun, even though I was petrified the whole time. 
I have shot my share of rapids. 
I cannot and would not do most of those things any more but I still ride motorcycles. :D

 

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12 hours ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

Well, one time I took a half dozen of those really thing waste basket liners, the ones you see in offices lining the little 3 gallon waste baskets.  Filled one  (filled is relative, what with having to twist it and tie it off, so maybe about 1/3 full) with straight oxygen from the welding set.  Filled another with straight acetylene.  Filled the others with what I guesstimated to be 1/4 Oxy and 3/4 acetylene, another about half and half, and the last at 1/4 acetylene and 3/4 O2.  
Took some of those long fireplace matches.  Lit one, plunged it into the pure O2.  Burned real bright, but nothing special. 

Next was the 100% acetylene.  Big flare up and impressive flash and fireball, but it just burned as it exited the hole the match had made.   
Then I did the 25% acetylene/75% O2.  Plunged the lit match in and then sat there stunned by the concussion, looking at the match in my hand and wondering if any of the neighbors heard it.  
I cut the remaining bags open with my knife.  


 

Try it with 32gal bags tied on a string and pulled into a jack o lantern candle.  Do it on Independence Day while launching bottle rockets.  The neighbors will become independent of their shorts.

 

Dangerous and stupid, not illegal: I answered “yes” when she asked if her pants made her look fat.  

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I used to ride motorcycles in traffic. ;)

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12 hours ago, sassnetguy50 said:

Try it with 32gal bags tied on a string and pulled into a jack o lantern candle.  Do it on Independence Day while launching bottle rockets.  The neighbors will become independent of their shorts.

...

Reminds me of  the last time we had a fourth of July party. Luckily the neighbor was at our house and participated in the shenanigans. All I will say about that is all of the Chinese kids in the neighborhood would come to our house to watch. BTW we lived in Chinatown in Sacramento. It was very noisy on the 4th of July, New Years Eve, and Chinese New Year.

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Volunteered to demonstrate the effects of Mustard ages on unprotected skin in the 7th Army CBR Warfare course in 68. Still got the scar.

Some other incidents are either NOYB or the statute of limitations may not have expired. :P

B759E812-27C9-4F73-87BD-DCBD3F5B289E.jpeg

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Got talked into joining the Polar Bear Club when a young guy by a cute little blonde. Went swimming in Lake Michigan in Chicago on New Year's Day.

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In the south we didn't often get snow, but when we did it was time to go driving!  Had a lot of fun on low friction surfaces.

 

In warmer weather we found more interesting challenges, like water skiing in a ditch, towed behind a car.

 

I've climbed down a 25-30 ft waterfall without a rope, and back up (that was fun :( ) and I've cliff dived into several lakes and even skied and swam in the Mississippi River near downtown Memphis

 

I've ridden dirt bikes through dirt. mud, water, buildings, stairs and even a fair amount of air (enough to snap 2 frames on landing)

 

But the dumbest???  Power diving in Heber Springs  If you aren't familiar, it is when you take a ski rope, a snorkel set and flippers and use the boat to pull you down quickly to about 20 feet below the surface and swim around for a few seconds before heading to the surface. . . it is a unique experience and can easily kill you if you don't know your limits.

 

and then I grew up and learned that I may not be immortal.

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It was a bit of a dare by our chemistry teacher in high school.  When he explained the "experiment" he was assuming we would use 3 inch funnels.  Well, if 3 is good than 12 must be better.  We brazed two 12 inch funnels together at the large ends and brazed an 18" tube to one of the small ends.  We filled the contraption with pure hydrogen then mounted it with the long tube up on the chemistry table, then light the top.  Nice flame that slowly descended into the tube as the hydrogen burned and sucked air in the bottom.  You can imagine the explosion that occurred when the flame found the air at the point of expansion.  We rattled the building pretty well and cracked a window in the classroom.  About 30 seconds after the boom, the principal comes in to see if everything is OK.  Our teacher has a smirk on his face and the rest of us quickly say, "Of course."  The principal left shaking his head and laughing.  That was over 40 years ago.  I can't imagine we'd get away with that now.

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When I was quite young I heard somewhere that gasoline was not explosive. you see cars having a wreck on television and they explode because of the gasoline, but this article said that gasoline was not explosive.

 

Gasoline FUMES were explosive. The article said that if you were to put a quarter cup of gasoline into a five gallon container, and put the lid on and shake It up, if it were to ignite it would have the explosive force of five sticks of dynamite.

 

Cool.

 

So a friend and I put some gasoline into a 5 gallon can. Probably more than a quarter cup, but I doubt it was more than a cup. And we put the lid on tight. And we shook the hell out of it. And then we tossed it out in the bay and let the tide take it out.

 

When it was about a hundred yards offshore we shot it with 308 tracer. We know we hit it. We could see the can move when the bullets hit it. But it did not explode.

 

Probably a good thing. Although it was annoying at the time .

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7 hours ago, DeaconKC said:

Got talked into joining the Polar Bear Club when a young guy by a cute little blonde. Went swimming in Lake Michigan in Chicago on New Year's Day.

 

I'm sure that she was quite impressed when you got out of the water.:rolleyes:

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7 hours ago, DeaconKC said:

Got talked into joining the Polar Bear Club when a young guy by a cute little blonde. Went swimming in Lake Michigan in Chicago on New Year's Day.

 

7 minutes ago, Cypress Sun said:

 

I'm sure that she was quite impressed when you got out of the water.:rolleyes:

 

Hey, I saw that episode of Seinfeld~!!   :lol:

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Well, back in the early 60's, I did ride in a metal barrel down a hill - straight into a telephone pole! Put a dent about 5 inches deep in the barrel. Unfortunately, the dent was right where my head was against the barrel. I was hospitalized for a couple of days due to the concussion.:blink:

 

In a related manner, I was well known in the local medical community for head injuries. I have had many stitches in my head due to various "activities" as a youth.:wacko:

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6 hours ago, J. Mark Flint #31954 LIFE said:

But the dumbest???  Power diving in Heber Springs  If you aren't familiar, it is when you take a ski rope, a snorkel set and flippers and use the boat to pull you down quickly to about 20 feet below the surface and swim around for a few seconds before heading to the surface. . . it is a unique experience and can easily kill you if you don't know your limits.

 

Hey i did almost the exact same thing.  Except no snorkel and instead of fins I had Skis (at least to start).  It wasn't on purpose either.  I was learning to water ski with a bunch of other kids and the adult was getting exasperated with all the kids just letting go of the rope.  So he stressed DON'T LET GO OF THE ROPE.  So when my turn came, I got up after a couple of tries and about a second later one of my skis dipped into the water and I went over face first.  But I didn't let go of the rope by gummit.  After a while I started reasoning with myself that it was probably OK to let go of the rope.  I was expecting to come back to the surface eventually and was getting worried that it wasn't happening.  All the kids in the boat were hollering that I was down, but he didn't believe it because he could still feel the drag on the boat.  Later he said he was confused because usually when the skier got dumped he looked back could see the rope dragging in the water.  When he couldn't see anything, he figured I was showboating coming up the side. 

 

I don't know if i went 20 ft deep, but I sure felt like a diving lure.  The next day when he wanted me to try again, there was talk of sticking a hook on my butt and seeing if we could catch a striper. 

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You guys are boring. I figured at least one of y’all had been shot out of a cannon, tried to jump an old bridge with a car or flew a biplane into a barn.

 

Most exciting things I’ve ever done was get pulled on stage by a stripper in Miami, and getting kicked out of a bar in Saginaw for trying to by beer underage.

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Back when I was young, dumb, and thinking I was immortal, a high school junior, I had a Yamaha 250 that I rode everywhere. Palmdale, CA, pushed up against the coastal range foothills, so there was miles and miles of trails to ride.

One day a friend and I were riding, lost track of time, and found ourselves miles from home with the sun setting. Only problem was my headlight was dead, so I lit out for home, ending up in the near dark on a trail i was not familiar with. As the last of the light was fading, visibility down to a few yards at best, I spotted what appeared to be a long straight stretch of trail and about 1/2 a mile ahead was a road with street lights!!  Being immortal I immediately hit the throttle and headed down hill at around 40+mph.

 

Focusing on the road ahead, I never saw the bank of the dry wash cutting across the trail. I only realized it when I felt my stomach head for my throat, heard the engine rev as the real wheel left the ground, , and my butt began to lift off the seat! I think the thought "You're so ***ked!" zipped through my mind.

 

The only reason I survived was the fact that the far bank of the wash had been eroded down to less than a foot.  I saw the ground again a split second before the front wheel hit soft sand about 2 feet deep. At this point the bike stopped abrupt;y, but I continued on, bruising the hell out of my thighs on the handlebars. This flipped me ass over tea kettle, whereupon I impacted the desert floor flat on my back at what felt like a zillion miles an hour. As I bounced I had a couple of realizations hit me. One, having the wind knocked out of you unleashes mind numbing panic until your lungs start working again, and second, I wasn't finished with the accident yet!

Coming back down to earth after the bounce I think I leveled a couple of mesquite and sage bushes, rolled a few times, and fetched up about a yard shy of a Joshua Tree! That woulda left a mark for sure.

My buddy, with more sense than I, saw my launch and was able to get stopped on the edge in time to see my some of my landing.  He pulled up next to me and jumped off his bike to find out if I was alive. He was yelling at me, laughing his ass off, and jumping around like a toad on a hot road!

As I finally started to breathe again I took stock. Everything hurt, my eyes didn't want to focus, and I wanted to throw up. When I tried to sit up my wrists wouldn't hold me and I actually did throw up. Chris, my buddy, told me not to move and took off to get assistance. (This was decades before cell phones!) It wasn't too long before the ambulance and police showed up. I was bundled onto a gurney and off to the ER.

Several hours later I was sent home in the care of a pair of extremely annoyed parents. The damage list wasn't too bad: very mild concussion, two sprained wrists, one severe one mild, deep contusions on both thighs, and a sprained shoulder.  My bike was in figuratively worse shape. Front wheel and forks bent, rear fender bent, seat ripped up, and tank dented. 

 

It took a few months but I recovered and got the bike repaired. But it was a long time before I was comfortable riding at night again,

 

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