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anyone "almost get killed"?

S

Smoov

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When I think about it I wonder why I am sitting here right now. I've had plenty of close calls including two monster truck wrecks. But there is one incident that still haunts me.
I was on I 93 just outside of Boston when my exhaust pipe got a hole in it and the heat melted some plastic lines and I lost all my air. I pulled to the shoulder and eventually a mechanic showed up, driving a tow truck.
He raised the tractor up off the ground and then went under the truck to replace the lines and fix the pipe. He told me to go back in the tractor and start the truck. The cab was difficult to get in because it was so high off the ground because it was hooked up to the tow truck. I start the truck, get good air pressure and the mechanic yells to shut it off. I shut it off, open the door take a step, and fall right out of the truck onto the right lane of 93 at rush hour. I forgot the tractor was hanging off the ground! With all my might i rolled under the tractor and some unknown vehicle just missed me. I could have got killed.
Anyone almost get killed?
 
I did that too and the last thing the wrecker operator said to me before I climbed up was--"be careful getting down"
 
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I think it was in '96....Maine had a big ice storm. I was delivering to a place in West Gardner.
On Indiana rd. went there all the time. It was bout 3 or 4 am. And a trees branches where hanging
In the path of the very nice 379 Pete I was driving. I saw a small dump truck coming the other way and
Figured if they would drive through they could break some of the branches and I wouldn't get scratched.
They stopped on the other side and I got out to talk. As we looked at the tree we heard a loud bang crack. He said RUN
I did and didn't get crunched. I didn't know it was the tree. Glad he said run. Lol
 
Well,

The one that sticks out in my mind, when I was young and stupid, and knew a bit less about working on cars then I thought I did.

I was around 21 years old and had a pot smoking party buddy who said he would come over to help me investigate a leaky transmission on a nasty old AMC Matador Sedan.

My childhood home was an old farm house which had a gravel driveway, and the yard was a few feet higher than the street, so the driveway had hills on each side that got lower as you went toward the house. So in preparation I parked the car sideways in the drive with the front tires on the hill. I sized it up and figured it wasn't high enough, so I jacked each side of the car up and put ramps under the front tires.

Then I borrowed my mom's car to pick up my friend.

So I'm underneath the car with a flashlight, trying to look at the transmission and I can't really see anything, my vision is partially obscured by the linkage. So I ask my friend to please put it in neutral, or something. He asked me if I was sure. Sure I was sure, I had the emergency brake on.

As soon as he took it out of park, it rolled baby. A quick geometrical calculation proved that when the front tires were on the driveway the bumper would be scant inches from the hill, which is where my skull happened to be.

I or something inside me reached up for the bottom of the car and found the front tire arm, or whatever it is called and clutched that to my chest while the car dragged me across the gravel drive.

I was crushed, I couldn't breathe, I was waving my hands from under the bumper to my friend, I could spit out one word at a time and asked him to lift the car. He grabbed the bumper and lifted the car so I could catch my breath, but that wasn't a permanent solution, he would have to get that old school bumper jack. Remember those? So he ran to grab that thing and wasn't paying attention when he put it on the stand and the durn thing clickety clacked all the way to the bottom and he would have to ratchet it all the way up again, but first he would have to lift the bumper again so I could breath.

Okay, I got my breath and he was trying to get the jack to go up, but wasn't getting anywhere so I reached out and flipped that little lever to make it go up, now we're cooking. And he had to lift the bumper once more so I could breathe but then the car was jacked up and he pulled me out from under.

My mom rushed me to the hospital, and I was there for a couple of days, scratches, cuts and bruises, I still have some scars, no broken bones or anything serious. I'm a tough SOG, but I have to be, because I'm a bonehead sometimes.

For years afterwards however, I would lay down at night, close my eyes and see that bumper coming for my head and rip the blankets off the bed.

Can you believe my stoner friend was mad because we left him there without a ride, and he had to walk home.

And I remember one time I was working as a bouncer at a topless bar on the East side... well, maybe that's a story for another day.
 
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So who brought the knife to the gunfight??
Never mind. Tell us about the topless chicks...
 
Actually, the full story is more embarrassing than the matador. I was alone in the parking lot, I had a knife and brass knuckles. I don't know, never will know, if the chamber was empty or if the gun misfired.

The "topless chicks" were sad, the other side of the g-string is a very sick and depressing place. I lasted less than two weeks at that job.

One of the dancers was a pre-op transsexual, and you would never, ever have guessed.
 
In the U.S cant say I have. Afghanistan, so many times I lost count. Changed my perspective on things..

There is one patrol that dramatically changed my life..Tell you another time.
 
July 7th, 1994. I was riding home from work on my 1990 Yamaha FZR600. There was a storm coming up so I was running pretty fast trying to beat the rain. The storm front arrived with a blast of wind and what turned out to be a microburst. I was blown off the road into a culvert and hit a metal drain pipe head on. I was doing 70 mph with no helmet, just a t-shirt and jeans. I was laying low over the tank at the time so I ate the windshield and rear view mirror on the way over the handlebars. I landed head-first, bounced across the gravel a couple of times and tangled up in a barbed-wire fence. I was immediately up and walking around, trying to assess my injuries and keep from going into shock.

I "walked away" with a broken nose, broken cheekbone, fractured skull, three broken toes, some torn lower back muscles and road rash over about 40% of my body.

I've had a few other close calls where I could have died, but that's the one that sticks out in my mind as the time that I SHOULD have died.
 
Well, cant say I remember the exact date but it was about 14 years ago. I was running walking floor for a trash company and I had an aluminum trailer with a badly cracked door on it. The rule was for the loaders to not put the load against the door because it put pressure on the lever. Well, they were usually good about that and I had no reason to think they did anything wrong but that is exactly what they did and I was complacent as I went in the landfill to open the door. Well I pulled the pin and caught the full force of the steel bar across the bridge of my nose. It lifted my feet of the ground and threw me back some 6 to 8 feet. I was out for who knows how long but when I regained consciousness I turned to see a piece of steel rebar sticking straight out of the ground about a foot from where I landed. Just a bit to that side and it would have been through my chest and likely through my heart. I also managed to make it through a flashover once inside a fully involved house fire back when I was a fire fighter but that's another story.
 
I do not have, of that I am aware, such recollection. I was probably, in those days, weeks, months, years, relying heavily on John Barleycorn, effectively eliminating MANY Months of memory or I was probably pretty drunk, although I wasn't very pretty.

Using upgraded technological speak: My System suffered from a Virus introduced by a Bug and ran amok restructuring some Bits of Memory.

Theoretically I am not actually here. I am merely existing in a Parallel Universe and the "reality" appears strikingly remarkable.
-- "Reality is the result of a single Atom, traveling back and forth through time and appearing to be everywhere at once. --R. Feynman, friend of S. Hawking

CHUCKLES!!
 
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