Have you saved anyones life? Been somewhere insanely cool? Changed the course of history?

Tell us your best true story.

With all the things I've done I still believe the coolest was a summer of commercial salmon fishing in Alaska.

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[ 10-03-2004: Message edited by: dAm ]

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I hate Santa Ana.

It happened on July 4, Y2K. I was hanging out with several of my friends that night doing what just about everyone in the civilized world was doing: lighting off low-grade explosives, both storebought and improvised, some legal, most not. Anyway, we ran out a little after midnight but we really had nowhere else to go, so we were just kicking back outside his place. Some young hispanic guy came by and told us his name, his crew, and that he didn't want to die that night. I didn't know what he was talking and didn't know how to respond but even I didn't really have the time to say much of anything before we saw the approaching car as it slowed down to about walking speed and the driver turned off his headlights. As he made a pass with just his marker lights on, my heart sunk. I wanted to get the hell out of there. I saw about 5 or 6 asian kids in the car, all trying to look as menacing as they could. I was spooked. My instinct was to run. I told my friends to get ready to bolt back to the house and get behind anything if they saw anyone raising a weapon in the car. The street was a cul de sac and I think the gang in the car knew that. They made their first pass to state their intentions and then proceeded to the end of the street to turn around. After they passed by the first time, I told everyone to move closer to the house (there were several cars out front to get behind, if need be, but there was no way we were bringing the guy inside.) So they came back and again had their just their parking lights on. I didn't see any weapons and we all stared them down as they passed. We stuck around for maybe 20 minutes longer, long enough for the hispanic kid to feel safe enough to continue on his way. Granted, I didn't really do much. I was just there at the right time. To this day, I'm sure that if we hadn't been there, he would have been dead.

The more interesting thing that I've come to realize is the nature of the fear I felt. It was pure dread. I wanted to get out of there and fast. I'm not one to be chased away, but as I said, my instinct was to run. It was starkly different from the time I actually did have bullets flying at me -- that was at a shithole called Lytle Creek near the Cajon Pass where a lot of the LA/Riverside/OC thugs and hicks like to go shooting. It once was a nice, regulated range. But that was well before the state troopers stopped patrolling. I like to think it was a simple mishap, that some dipshit was shooting through a bush without realizing that they were firing onto our target area, and on a trip out to replenish some targets, I had ricochets bouncing off rocks no more than 10 feet from me. That fear was entirely different. I would even called fear. I was pissed more than anything. I found myself thinking about both of those events recently, and I thought it was interesting the way each affected my mindset. Facing insurmountable adds against the gangbangers, I found myself fighting my own fear. But when the bullets were actually flying, and it was longer a question of whether my life was truly at risk, I wanted nothing more than to slip around the line and silence the threat. I suppose my father's discretion on that day was the better part of valor. We simply left, never to return to that particular part of the basin. (and to this day, I have only shot where there's line enforcement. It's not cheap, but then niether is my life)

[ 10-04-2004: Message edited by: WillyTrombone ]

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Other than that, maybe stopping a drunken fool from hitting his equally drunken wife. Oddly, this was in the middle of the street, in broad daylight.

[edit]

Oh, and Cac. . . . HOAX!!

[ 10-04-2004: Message edited by: AcidWarp ]

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

quote:

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Originally posted by Cacophonous:
Jumped the grand canyon on a Yamaha 60cc Trail bike.

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It's better the second time.

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My penis was cold.

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can't ever forget that one...

*plop*

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