Share your Brushes With Death stories.

[datzenmike]

Smoke had a close brush with death and flatcat's life flashed before his eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

true story....

[smoke]

Flatsmoke

[510freak]

Flatsmoke

 

 

new title?

[510freak]

Rolled a 620 back in 86,rolled 8 times,down about a 80 foot drop(the roll started before the drop)

When it all stopped, we were upside down,in the pitch dark,with Bananas favorite tune on the radio(Top gun,danger zone)

A bit disoriented we found the road, some cool peeps picked us up(we were out in the boonies)

Took a couple tow trucks a few hrs to get it out, Towed it home pulled the plugs,Hammered the roof out,missing rear glass,cracked windshield.

But the fucker drove!

[paradime]

My hands cramped up when was posting my brushes with death.

 

Brushes with death. I thought you guys were drinking buddies for a while? I bet he's a mean fucking drunk though.

[wayno]

Brushes with death huh, well I was standing on top of a mountain with my friends, we were playing hacky sack which is dangerous because we don't know how to play hacky sack, oh the mountain was Mt Adams, and we had crampons on. :lol:

Now for the real story, I was standing on top of Dog mountain with my friends, we fly hanggliders, and the weather was not cooperating, so one at a time we would sacrifice ourselves to the wind gods by launching off and flying down to the landing area and landing, some would just fly down without doing anything special, some would do aerobatics, I have two different stories to tell here from this point.

Number one was that all my friends eventually launched and landed and I was the only one left on top, the gate was locked at the bottom of the hill because the timber company had decided that we were not going to fly there anymore because an eagle had made a nest less than a mile from launch, but this was against federal law because the nest was made while we were flying there, and nothing is supposed to change according to the law, we were back in the next weekend, anyway I decided that it was my turn to launch and fly down and land, normally I would hook in to the glider and then walk to launch, just before I would get there I would ask for wing handlers if it was windy, but today there was no wind and I was the only one on top, so I just picked up the glider and walked up to launch, looked down the lake to see if there might be any wind coming, no such luck, I thought that it was as good as time as any to go, so I picked it up and ran, I knew I was fucked right away but I hung on anyway, but the glider did not fly far, I piled in/crashed about 40/50 feet down the hill, I did a flip and ended up sitting on my ass while the glider was a couple yards in front of me with a totally wasted control bar, I seemed to be all right, so i got up and realized I was unhurt, so I picked up the glider and hauled it back up to the top and tore it down and put it back in its bag, every tube in it was bent a little, I survived this fuck up, 50 percent of the folks that don't hook in die.

My second incident happened in the same place, same circumstances, no wind, I was not the last person on the top this time, I launched without any issues, flew over above the landing area with about 1300 feet, and immediately put the glider into a spin, I did about 10 rotations and came out going straight down(on purpose), I did a couple wingovers, and looked at how high I was, I decided to do 1 more wingover, I flipped the bar out went straight down, pushed the bar out and came to a stop upside down, needless to say I was not happy about this, so I waited a second or two to see what was going to happen, I decided that I was fucked and was going to hit the ground going straight down more than likely, as I was less than 200 feet above the ground, so I let go of the control bar, grabbed my reserve chute handle and pulled it out and threw it in one motion, now one must understand that I had been to a chute clinic about 3 months before that day, and it took me 13 seconds to throw my chute in the simulator, well I threw that chute in about one second, after it was thrown I thought to myself, why did you throw it at the ground wayne, but in reality I had thrown it straight sideways, after that first thought, I then just hung there in mid air watching everything happen, the bag went towards the ground I thought, the wiggly line then straightened out, the bag opened and some red came out of the bag and more wiggly lines straightened out, about that time I noticed something else was happening, so I looked at what would be up to me which was down in reality, I seen two things, the ground coming at me fast, and my control bar coming by me also, I grabbed the control bar and flared as hard as I could, about that time one of my friends yelled at me to get my legs out, meaning out of the harness I was in connecting me to the hangglider, I thought I would have to let go of the control bar to do that, and here came the ground, so I told him I couldn't, that is when I hit the ground, well lucky for me, when I flared as hard as I could, the chute opened at the same time, I was almost stopped when I hit the ground, nothing was damaged, the glider was fine, the chute landed in a mud puddle, and I was not hurt at all, I flew the next day.

I have a lot of these stories like this, several more just like these two, but I will save them for another day, maybe tomorrow.

[510freak]

Another.

in 92, Come around a corner,some tweaked fucker is in my lane,

bamm head on,totaled that 510,too bad it was a great puddle jumper.

[datsunaholic]

 

You're probably thinking, well, that doesn't look too bad.

 

Other than the seat rails failed and folded in half.  But the real issue was after I got hit, the car ended up crosswise in the HOV lane (head on into the jersey barrier) with my driver's door jammed shut and the HOV lane was clear of traffic, meaning anyone in that lane would come at me doing 60+.  That was my biggest fear.  Fortunately a DOT truck was on scene and blocked the lane relatively quickly.

 

 

Other incidents- I've been in 3 collisions when I was in the Navy.  My ship was sideswiped by an aircraft carrier in 1995.  2 collisions on patrol boats, one put a pair of Marines in the ER after we ran over their zodiac at close to 30kts.  Hitting the zodiac launched our 27ft aluminum deep-v twin-diesel patrol boat 10 feet in the air and landed bow first, and I ended up in a heap under the chart table, having hit everything sharp on the way down.  Still have scars from that.  The second collision was more damaging to equipment than people.  But the worst injury I took on those was I had a 300 pound watertight engine hatch dropped on my head in Ketchikan.  Took the knife-edge right to the face.  Could have been really bad, but I only ended up with restricted duty for 2 days and 3 stitches in my eyebrow and a lot of scrapes to my nose, cheek, etc.  Looked like hell.

 

Then was the time I got thrown off a golf cart and tried to stop the planet with my face and ended up in the ER.  Those stitches gave me matching scars in my other eyebrow from the boat hatch incident.

[smoke]

new title?

not yeeeeeeeet

[510freak]

not yeeeeeeeet

 

:frantics: :lol:

[thisismatt]

[thisismatt]

But seriously, I haven't been all that close.  Been hit by two people running red lights, but really only got clipped.  Ate it doing about 35mph down a fire road on my mountain bike, but was wearing a helmet so I only ended up with some nasty road rash on my arm & shoulder as my head took the pressure off the rest of my body :P

 

Spun out into the oncoming lane in a janky 944 doing about 65 into a 25mph chicane.  The car had already been into a ditch so the driver door wouldn't open.  The sunroof was out and on the back seat, so that was how we got in...but it meant I couldn't push the seat back so I was pretty scrunched up at 6'4".  I took it for a joyride up this windy highway and came into the chicane too fast, tried to brake and the pedal went to the floor...tried to downshift and the shift knob popped off in my hand...ended up doing a 180 ending up a couple feet from the guardrail on the other side of the road.  My bro-in-law and his brother were following in his 914 laughing the whole time.

[wayno]

I have another story tonight, I used to go to Lake Chelan WA every July for the whole month to hangglide, one time there was a SW wind when I launched, I climbed up to about 12,000 feet over Chelan Butte and crossed the river(columbia) and started heading east towards Mansfield WA out on the flats of eastern WA, I was bucking this southwest wind for 15 miles getting lower and lower, everytime I caught a thermal and climbed out I would lose the thermal because I was trying to drift east and keep going the direction I wanted to go, but the thermals were drifting north, so I finally gave up when I decided that if I did not go with the drift I was going to land/hit the deck, so I went with the next bit of lift I found down wind and lost it fairly quickly so I started gliding, my GPS estimated I was going 70mph across the ground out to the middle of nowhere, I was down to less than 500 feet looking for a place to land when I hit something, I started circling in a big circle trying to find it and came up with nothing getting lower and lower, down wind again and I finally found it, I was at about 200 feet when I started climbing(about 2500 feet above sea level(ASL)), I stayed in that thermal until I was at 12,000 ASL, over a 9000 foot gain and I turned down wind, my first clue should have been that no matter where I went, I was in lift/climbing, so I thought that this was heaven, I kept flying down wind and climbing, about 20 miles after I left that thermal I got sucked up into a cloud, I was not a master pilot, I wasn't even advanced, I was just a guy that flew a lot, well I pulled in the control bar and started trying to get out of the cloud, everything was white like a heavy snow storm/blizzard/white out, I could not tell what way I was going, a couple minutes later I came out the bottom of the cloud going the way I had came from, so I turned down wind, that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, less than a minute later I was sucked up into the cloud again, I have no idea how long I was in that cloud the second time, but I started thinking about the guys over in Europe that got sucked into the cloud, more than half of them died, they froze to death in that cloud, I started looking at my glider, it was flapping it's wings like a bird, ice was forming on everything, my arms were white, so was my face, my vario(tells me if I am going up or down) was saying I was going a 1000 feet up, then a 1000 feet down, after a while I was starting to get very cold, all the time I was pulled in trying to go down, I finally popped out the side of that cloud at over 14,000 feet ASL, I turned down wind again and let the control bar out for best glide as I was not under the cloud anymore, my hangglider  flew like crap, it had an awful turn in it, I flew down wind about 30 miles to a town about 70 miles from where I launched from and landed at a small private airport, it landed like crap.

It turned out that I had bent/broken my hangglider in that cloud, it was a miracle that it even flew anymore, the leading edge on one side was so bent, that the inside rippled like exhaust pipe does when they bend it to go over the rear axle, and to top it off, I went to a parachute clinic a couple months later and simulated a parachute deployment, my chute was home made and would have not opened properly, or it would have just ripped on one side and been just a bunch of material flapping above me on my way to my death, which would have taken several minutes before I reached the ground, and even if I had survived the landing, I would likely have been in the middle of nowhere and not likely able to walk.

 

Story #2

 

I was at a place called ten mile near clarkston/lewiston ID, my friend had just top landed after flying for a while, it was my turn, I launched and proceeded to get lower and lower, I thought I was going to have to land at the bottom of the snake river canyon, then I hit some lift, I started climbing real fast, after about a 3000 foot gain my friend told me on the radio that the wind had just went from 5 to 35mph, about the same time it hit me and I told him it was to late, I was like a leaf in the wind, after I got control of the wing I was going down really fast/losing altitude, I picked a landing area maybe 100 feet in front of me, but it turned out I was going backwards because there was to much wind for me to penetrate, I went down behind the hill I was flying and was watching the ground going up, I was dropping like a rock, when the ground came up at me I flared as hard as I could and hit the ground hard, it turned out that my body pile drived into the ground perfectly straight, like I was standing up and something dropped on me from above, I felt really bad after I landed, my neck hurt real bad, but I was breathing and moving, but I did not do anything except unhook from the glider and hold the nose down so the wind would not blow it away, I sat there for a while till my friend showed up, he said he thought that he was looking for a body, and was very happy to see me sitting up.

I went to the doctor 2 days later and he told me that I had soft tissue damage from my skull to the middle of my back, and that I had to give up hanggliding, I said I could not stop hanggliding, he looked at me like I was crazy, then said if that happened again it would likely kill me, so I told him I would not do that again.

On the top of the Ten Mile hill is a marker with about 12 names on it, they had all died hanggliding in that area, we never went back there.

[510freak]

Not about myself(other than I was following the guy)

Cruised into town(where we used to live) in the 510.

Some dudes on my side of the road,woah dude, so we followed him he clipped a corner rolled,ended up pinned under his car.

The ambulance people said good thing he was drunker than a skunk,he was all jello,not a mark on him

[a.d._510_n_ok]

 

You're probably thinking, well, that doesn't look too bad.

 

Other than the seat rails failed and folded in half.  But the real issue was after I got hit, the car ended up crosswise in the HOV lane (head on into the jersey barrier) with my driver's door jammed shut and the HOV lane was clear of traffic, meaning anyone in that lane would come at me doing 60+.  That was my biggest fear.  Fortunately a DOT truck was on scene and blocked the lane relatively quickly.

datsunaholic, man, glad you came out of that alive and healthy and please don't hate me but....are you parting that thing?

[paradime]

In my early 20s I was waiting tables at a place called Mohonk Mountain House. It was a 200-year-old hotel in the middle of nowhere upstate New York. John Riley was the beverage manager of the hotel, and he and I hung out a lot together. One summer it had been raining stupid hard for close to a month and the mighty Rondout Creak was flooding 4 feet. John decided it would be a good idea to shoot the rapids in a raft, but neither of us had one. Neither of us had money either so it wasn’t possible to go to Big 5 Sporting Goods and pick up an Avon, so we settled for a tiny Kmart two man raft. Where we put in, between Rosendale, and High Falls it was calm and flat, but very swollen. John’s girlfriend drove ahead to pick us up a few miles downstream and would be waiting there for us. John warned me there would be a section of the river we would need to assess to see if we should forward it rather than trying to shoot the rapids. When we got to the spot he was talking about I could hear the intense low rumbling of falling water. We paddled off to the right and climbed the river bank to get a better look. The river kind of split into two sections at this point, on the right was rolling Rapids that didn’t look life-threatening, but on the left there were two drop offs. One was wide and about 3 feet high. The second one narrowed dramatically and fell well over 10 feet.

 

Our plan was simple, push off, stay to the right, and hope for the best on the rolling rapids. I was confident in the water, I’ve surfed big waves and could hold my breath for over two minutes. John and I tightened our life vests, pushed off, and were immediately sucked off to the left side. The dinky 20 inch paddles were useless and the little raft was spinning around so our paddling was undirected anyway. We fell over the first drop and managed to stay on. When we came to the second we were going backwards so I was the first to go. As we fell, John jumped over me and out far as he could. I on the other hand fell straight in. Now  I’ve gone over the face of some pretty big waves and got my ass handed to me, but this was a whole other level of power, and this shit didn’t stop. I was stuck in the churn and no matter how hard I tried to swim my way out, my limbs were useless, flapping around like a rag doll. The water was so violent it ripped everything off my body, from the life vest to my sox. I mean EVERYTHING. I’ve never felt anything so powerful, and I wasdn’t able to exert any control in the situation. I was panicking and expending too much energy trying to fight it. The oxygen in my lungs was getting used up fast, so I just went limp. I remember thinking I’m going to drowned right here and my family is going to be so upset. My lungs were spent and I was at peace with letting go when I felt a rock brush past my knee. I instinctively kicked off it and my head came out just passed the churn. Instantly all the fear and fight rushed back in with my first breath. My buddy John was already standing on the opposite bank panicked and screaming my name. Fortunately the water was calm and shallow where I was, so I could crawl out.  John told me he was sure I was dead, because there was no way I could hold my breath that long. Time slows down and a minute feels like a lifetime, My best guess is it was less than a minute, but that was the longest minute I’ve ever endured. 

[ratpatrol66]

Driving to town in my Patrol and had the right rear axle come out. Felt a wierd wiggle from the rear and slowed down, another wiggle then it came out. Not a good feeling! When I was pulling it out of the bushes damn near got run over by an RV.