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Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 11:15 PM, Scheiss Meister said:

No, it was an ultralight, like a hang glider with an engine and prop hung from it.  They look fun until you think about the prop catching up to you.

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They are fun. My only trip up in one was in an Eagle 2-seater that was later recalled because too many of them collapsed up in the air. The pilot was a nice guy who later got sideways with the cops over some Smuggler's Blues, so I heard.

If you ever wondered what it'd be like to get lifted up by a box kite while a lawnmower runs right behind you, ultralights are the thing.

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Posted (edited)
  On 3/19/2025 at 5:46 PM, RDCanecutter said:

Of the initial murder? No. Of the execution? Yes.

Lasting effects? I don't know. Always had the ability to detach from a situation that you'd think would make somebody go berserk (though I would occasionally let myself go and engage in mayhem, as a sort of gift to myself,) post-execution and maybe just getting older, found myself with a super=power level of calm when I needed it. (I probably just described a personality disorder.)

Definitely was given the gift of not being scared of death. Not in a crazy reckless way, I do want to live, but I actually enjoy it more because obviously nothing's forever. My brother showed me a way through fear.

Lost the ability to worry about piddly shit. Not sure I ever did, but I don't even have the ability to fake it anymore.

Still hate phones ringing, but I only hear real ones.

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Damn, man.  You might actually be the most interesting guy in the world.  A lot of that "interestingness" come by hard, but still.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 11:36 PM, RDCanecutter said:

They are fun. My only trip up in one was in an Eagle 2-seater that was later recalled because too many of them collapsed up in the air. The pilot was a nice guy who later got sideways with the cops over some Smuggler's Blues, so I heard.

If you ever wondered what it'd be like to get lifted up by a box kite while a lawnmower runs right behind you, ultralights are the thing.

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when I first moved down to Louisiana to work at the nuclear power plant, one of my colleagues was a hippie engineer who decided he needed to have an ultralight plane.   We had a crawfish boil out in a field and he flew that thing and landed about 50 yards from us.   The wind started picking up after an hour or two, and you know he was drinking a lot of Abita beer while eating mud bugs that were, as my Cajun friends said, “well seasoned”.   

We told him that he needed to leave the plane here, or one of us would get a trailer and move it to his house. But he insisted on flying at home.  He apparently made it about 500 yards until a downdraft pushed a wing too close to a beautiful oak tree, which led to an instant gravity attack. 

He always smoked a lot of dope, but I guarantee you he smoked more after his double lumbar fusion and repaired tibia.   There is no force of nature that will get me on one of those things.

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Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 9:32 PM, Underdog said:

My sister witnessed her youngest blow his brains out, completely amazed how she functions as normally possible as she does on a daily basis. 

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That is horrifying. 

Friend in high school called a bunch of people out to a common meeting spot for our small town high schoolers. Charismatic guy. Said he had something cool to show everyone or something like that. Gun to the head. Never will understand 

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Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 9:04 PM, Sgt Hulk said:

First death I saw.  Colleague shot through leg. Then stomach.   It’s strange you don’t really process during the fog and chaos. You just react.  It would be weeks later and still now I see it in my dreams and I see it happen to me   This thread jogged that memory.   
 

he didn’t make it.  It was 2006

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What’s the story there?

Posted (edited)
  On 3/19/2025 at 11:15 PM, Scheiss Meister said:

No, it was an ultralight, like a hang glider with an engine and prop hung from it.  They look fun until you think about the prop catching up to you.

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One of these.  Video has some "hell no" views in flight. 

 

I remember there used to be an Ultralight park off of I-10 in between Houston and Sealy in the 80s.

 

 

Edited by dcbc
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Posted

I had an undergrad coop working for me at a UT lab.  Her dad had died in an ultralight accident.  His buddy had built the plane from a kit but didn't trust his own meager flying skills for the test flight.  He asked his best friend to do the honors.  Engine crapped out several hundred yards in the air, and that was it.  

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Posted
  On 3/20/2025 at 1:17 AM, jimmyjazz said:

I had an undergrad coop working for me at a UT lab.  Her dad had died in an ultralight accident.  His buddy had built the plane from a kit but didn't trust his own meager flying skills for the test flight.  He asked his best friend to do the honors.  Engine crapped out several hundred yards in the air, and that was it.  

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My wife's cousin bought one.  Fortunately, he only taxied it around the neighborhood.  After that, it fell into disrepair thankfully.

Posted
  On 3/20/2025 at 1:17 AM, jimmyjazz said:

I had an undergrad coop working for me at a UT lab.  Her dad had died in an ultralight accident.  His buddy had built the plane from a kit but didn't trust his own meager flying skills for the test flight.  He asked his best friend to do the honors.  Engine crapped out several hundred yards in the air, and that was it.  

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you could hear his best friend as he lost altitude…

IMG_2932.gif.5f4c01a41fd9696b95eced46accf58c9.gif

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Posted
  On 3/20/2025 at 1:17 AM, jimmyjazz said:

I had an undergrad coop working for me at a UT lab.  Her dad had died in an ultralight accident.  His buddy had built the plane from a kit but didn't trust his own meager flying skills for the test flight.  He asked his best friend to do the honors.  Engine crapped out several hundred yards in the air, and that was it.  

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I hope you consoled her.

funeral GIF

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Posted (edited)

I was the second or third car that came upon a dead body in the highway, but my the time I registered what happened I was 40 yards passed, so exited and turned around and by the time I had circled back the entire highway was shut down and fire trucks, cops, ambulances galore.

There was no wreckage or debris from what I could tell, just a dead body. 
 

I had to drive 5 more hours with my anxiety at a 10 after that. My own mortality was all I could think about and was gripped with fear. Not a fun road trip.

Edited by Vegas64
Posted

Didn’t see but heard a murder suicide in my apartment complex when I lived in San Antonio. Her screaming woke me. It was so loud and panicked that it didn’t even sound like English. Just incomprehensible. Until the unmistakable “pop… pop pop pop pop pop” followed by the eeriest, complete silence. SAPD was on the scene shortly after, flashing lights reflecting around in the courtyard, and you could hear them knocking on the guy’s door. Not long after was one last “pop” and you knew how the story ended. That was almost exactly 7 years ago.

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Posted
  On 3/20/2025 at 4:18 AM, RDCanecutter said:

I imagine that most of us are slackers compered to people even 100 years ago.

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I tried to die several times before I was 24.  Not intentionally.  Something kicked in about age 25 that I stopped doing the most egregiously stupid and potentially fatal stuff.    I absolutely buy into that theory that a teenager’s brain does not have adult reasoning power until much later in life.

 

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Posted (edited)
  On 3/20/2025 at 4:28 AM, Gatorubet said:

I tried to die several times before I was 24.  Not intentionally.  Something kicked in about age 25 that I stopped doing the most egregiously stupid and potentially fatal stuff.    I absolutely buy into that theory that a teenager’s brain does not have adult reasoning power until much later in life.

 

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There’s a reason auto insurance for males drops at 25. 

Edited by Pato del Muerto
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Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 2:39 AM, Ghost of LL said:

And that’s a first. Which for a man my age, is kind of extraordinary.  Those of you who served in combat have undoubtedly seen it many times.  I haven’t.

Driving home along 360.  Some guy decided it would be a good idea to cross the highway. It wasn’t. Car ahead of me hits him.

Anytime a shoe flies off, it’s bad. This was no different. I suggest someone check his pulse. He doesn’t have one.  Someone has the presence of mind to start chest compressions.  That actually works, from the standpoint that it started the blood flowing as evidenced by the growing pool of blood from the back of his head.

I didn’t do shit to help. You think you’d be a superhero in that situation. I certainly wasn’t. I stood there fairly slack-jawed. 
 

Then I went to Maudie’s and had a couple margaritas.

I’m not feeling particularly great right now.

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So did the shoes fit?

 

But seriously that is horrible for the person and for you and everyone who had to witness or be involved.  Regardless of what you did or did not do, it would have had no impact on saving him.

Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 1:34 PM, Herbie Hancock said:

 

 


He’s not unfazed, he’s just good at hiding it….for now.

 

 

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One of my best friends and a fellow PJ went into HSI for almost 20 years after getting out. I went a different more sedentary route (sort of) after getting out. Some of the shit he told me he has had to see and do would break a lot of people. Thankfully he's retired now. He is a huge advocate and volunteer with the VA helping veterans in all sorts of situations from homelessness  to PTSD treatment. He's a fucking saint for the work he has done helping vets start to get their lives back together.

BUT along the way he also seen A LOT OF DEATHS among the ranks of those he has committed himself to help and helped families deal with those losses.

Me personally, I will post some of the tragic deaths I will never erase from my mind in another post.

But my friend has seen a lot more than I believe I could have dealt with. You just never know.

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Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 5:53 PM, Goredho said:

Witnessing violent/traumatic death is no joke.  I was driving next to a small airfield in a suburb of Salt Lake City with my then infant son in his car seat in the back.  I noticed a small plane that had just taken off kind of rising and falling erratically before stalling out and plunging into the ground.  No explosion, but it caught fire quick and by the time I was pulled over, the whole plane was on fire.  This was about 30 yards away from me on the other side of a security fence.  I pulled over, got over to the fence, and I could see the pilot burning inside.  The first vehicle to arrive on the inside of the fence was just a civilian car, and a young woman got out and got within maybe 5-10 yards of the cockpit and just started wailing in a way I had never heard before.  Emergency vehicles arrived pretty quickly, but they couldn't do much.  Plane burned down super quick, and the pilot certainly was dead by the time they got there.  I read in the paper the next day that he was just a local pilot who flew advertising banners over sporting events.  He was taking off to go fly something over a minor league baseball game when he had some sort of engine trouble and boom he was gone.  That event fucked with me for quite awhile, and recalling it now, I can still see the dude in the cockpit.  I hope it does not stick with you like it did me, @Ghost of LL.  Here's a photo of the aftermath and the news article:

4TUTI55CMRKU3PIGUDAJKMN7NE.jpg?auth=4799

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Obviously did not have the SURLY flying banner budget behind him. You get what you pay for...

Posted
  On 3/20/2025 at 12:28 AM, Reynolds Woodcock said:

That is horrifying. 

Friend in high school called a bunch of people out to a common meeting spot for our small town high schoolers. Charismatic guy. Said he had something cool to show everyone or something like that. Gun to the head. Never will understand 

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The Pearl Jam aong “Jeremy”. About the guy who blew his brains ourtin the midfle of a vlasstoom, I was pretty good froends with a gitl in the class.

Posted
  On 3/20/2025 at 1:18 PM, hookem2010 said:

I was a pretty well-behaved kid for the most part, but did the typical stupid stuff in college. I am not looking forward to when my boys are that age. It's amazing most of us make it.

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I distinctly remember trying to climb onto the hood through the sunroof on i35. Cringe at the memory to this day. I also remember my friend splitting semis on i35. Wtf. Lucky to be here. 

Posted
  On 3/19/2025 at 1:41 PM, Trey3216 said:

Me and Dad go outside to find running man on our driveway with one in the chest and one previously in the forehead...I say previously because the back of his head and his brains were all over the place.  Dad was like "ehhh, let's go back inside son"  

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  On 3/19/2025 at 4:00 PM, Ghost of LL said:

Dude--what the fuck kinda neighborhood did you grow up in?

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Posted

Uh I saw this when I was almost 4

On January 19, 1985, as Soucek was enclosed in his barrel, 180 feet above the floor of the Astrodome, the barrel was released prematurely and began spinning as it fell toward the floor. Instead of landing in the center of the tank of water, the barrel hit the rim.Foam pads which had been placed at the bottom of the tank to cushion Soucek's fall had floated to the surface before the barrel was released.
Soucek, severely injured, was still alive when he was cut from the barrel but died while the Astrodome stunt show was still going on. Stuntman Evel Knievel had tried to persuade Soucek not to go through with the stunt, calling it "the most dangerous I've ever seen".

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