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The Most Daring/Dangerous Thing You've Done

Kestra

Admiral
Premium Member
As someone who generally plays it safe, I need to live vicariously through others and I want to hear tales of your most daring adventures! I put "daring/dangerous" in the title but really, it's open ended. Come on guys, this is your chance to brag, as clearly everyone enjoys doing.

Note: This thread is not endorsement of any dangerous activities!
 
I suppose learning to fly is dangerous. (Actually, I suspect teaching students to fly is a bit moreso...but that's not something I've done.) It isn't an active sort of danger if you know what you're doing, but the hazards of screwing up are obvious.

The few times I've been a bit freaked out by it were doing required maneuvers. Stalls were a very strange feeling at first, and I still don't like the power-on stall. Most recently, the chief instructor for my flight school unexpectedly put me into a spiral dive during the "unusual attitude recovery" section of a stage check, which was a bit more extreme than I had been expecting. It's a bit unnerving seeing the airspeed needle shooting up towards Vne.
 
Taking a sharp curve, at like 80 MPH, after the rain, just because I had never driven that fast and was curious. Othersie, I I almost never go over the speed limit these days (other drivers hate me for that).
 
US Navy, off the starboard side of the USS Carl Vinson, in 1988. Two days before our scheduled port visit to Hong Kong, Deck Department had to ready the Captain's Gig, which included rigging the boat boom on the starboard side where the Jacob's Ladder and Gig are secured during a port visit. The boom is secured to the hull of the ship while underway, but once readied for service, it is unpinned and then swung out using a block & tackle. The issue at hand is that the block & tackle is a series of two blocks, the hook at the end which secures to the end of the boom, and the natural fiber rope, which runs the path of three pulleys.

The block is *only* supposed to be rigged when the ship is not underway; however, the Division Chief knows we will be under the gun once we anchor out, and that the Master Coxswain and Crane Operator will be busy dropping the Gig into the water once we anchor. It seems that the CO wanted to be ready to leave the ship ASAP.

So, the Chief takes a few of us to the weather deck where the boom is located, and we spend almost an hour separating the rat's nest the block & tackle and rope have become. Then, the Chief says, "Alright, which of you is going to take the block out there and hook it to the end of the boom?" Mind you, flight operations are taking place which means the ship is sailing into a headwinds at 15+ knots. All of the resident bad-asses look around and say, "FUCK THAT, CHIEF". Chief is pissed, so I, being 19 and looking for that adventure the Navy is supposed to have eagerly state, "I'll do it!".

I got outfitted with a Kaypok life preserver, shinnied over the safety lines of the weather deck, and sat on the boom. This was a rush! Approximately 20' below me was the rushing sea, with the ship steaming ahead and the sound of jet aircraft launching/landing from above. As I looked forward, it appeared that the ship was turning left, then right, then left, then right. I had a safety line secured to the life jacket which I hooked to an eye on the hull. The other guys handed the block, and I carefully scooted my butt along the boom with the block in one hand while steadying myself with the other. The Chief was barking orders at the other guys not to give me too much slack and also telling me to take my time. I would get a couple of feet, unhook the safety line from the eye I passed, and then hook it to the next one. One guy got shitty and yelled at me to hurry up. Big mistake. The Chief jumped down his throat and tore him a new one. Chief was a crusty old Sea Dog with 18+ years of service. He looked out at me and said, "You fall into the water and you damned well better hope the sharks get you, because I'm not going to want to explain to the Old Man why you're rigging the boat boom while we're underway!"

I grinned, and said, "No problem, Chief!" and continued to scoot along until I got to the end. We double-checked the lines to insure they weren't tangled and then I attached the block to the end of the boom. I sat there for a moment just marveling at the entire seascape in relation to where I was on the ship -- just hanging off the side. After a few, the Chief shouted, "HEY! GITCHERASSBACKHERE!"

I scooted right back as quickly as possible and hopped back over the lines to the weather deck. Everyone else either called me a suck ass for "sucking up to the Chief" or said I was nuts for going out there. The Chief ragged those who called me a suck ass, and their response was that they weren't stupid.

I friggin loved it! :cool::techman:
 
skydiving (3 times)
I've got a motorcycle (vulcan, of course ;) )

I wouldn't have guessed the motorcycle thing! Do you plan on going skydiving again? My husband did once, before we got married. He waited until I was out of the country and then did it so I couldn't object!

Telling someone exactly what I thought of them.

Oooh, how bad was it?

I'd... rather not talk about it.

Awww okay, sorry.
 
Parasailing, drove a chevy at 94 mph and walking through a forest after a bad ice storm.
 
Well, it's pretty hard to top John Picard's Navy story.

As for me . . well, I once drove around with an expired license for eight months.

Yep . . . I'm a wuss.
 
A couple of weeks back, went caving through 'Gods Fingers' on the island of Santo, Vanuatu.

Possibly the most amazing thing. Ever.
 
Went to the US all by myself at age 21. First time away abroad traveling alone, and I of course had to go where I had to deal with DH-fucking-S :lol: But it was a great trip after that and even though stuff has surfaced after that has made big parts of it a lie, I don't regret it.
 
* I used to chase tornadoes.
* Drove my car well above 100+, just not sure where.
* Ramped railroad tracks at 100 mph. Got airtime.
 
^Oh that reminds me:

Drove at 110 miles an hour on the highway, in pretty heavy rain, trying to catch up to another car. Yeah that was pretty fucking stupid in hindsight.
 
Well an assortment of stuff. A couple off the top of my head.

I have a pilots license as well, but I don't actually considering flying a plane all that daring or dangerous. It is a thrill though.

On the dangerous front, a buddy and I spent a long summer in Hawaii one year living at his mother's place. We had all just gotten into diving that year and we total dive bums the whole summer.
Every day was two dives, before and after lunch. We mixed in night dives and circle the island of Oahu looking for good spots to drop in.
After a month or so we were getting more adeventurous and decide to tackle some lava tubes at Shark's Cove. There is an entry on the reef that drops down about 20ft, like an elevator shaft. From there, several entry points are available to enter the tubes. For the most part the tubes have wide entry point that shrink down to something a little bit bigger than a diver in full gear. Usually the tubes have multiple intersections that branch off. This leaves lots of opportunity to explore, or possibly get lost and die.
My buddy and I set up our basic dive plan, drop in, tie off a guide rope at the tube entrance, do a light check, make only right turns at intersections.
Let me tell you, if you have an ounce of claustrophobia, this is the way to find it. It was tiny, pitch black if we turned off our lights, and loud. I didn't know beforehand but the air bubbles we released were forcing their was through the volcanic rock above us and it made the most intense roaring noise.
We made our way in probably a 100 yards or so, ran into lobster that was as surprised to see us as we were it, and turned around to head out.
Once out of the cave I check my tank gauge, and without thinking about I had used about half of the air I would have in a normal dive of that length.

The epilogue to the story is a month later a couple navy divers got lost in the same tubes and didn't make it out.
 
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