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That Time I Almost Died

RPM

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RPM

RPM 26382

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or "Hold my beer and watch this"

I was 14 and my Dad bought an old '59 International truck to lease out as a local delivery to the company he worked for. One of his get rich quick schemes, but I digress. While making the deal he spotted an old Kawasaki 175 dirt bike and made the guy throw it in the deal. HOT DAMN! Dad didn't buy cool shit often, but this was excellent! It was old. The blue paint was chipped and scratched up. It was way past it's prime, dirty, dinged and rusty. But this was my first legitimate dirt bike that I had dreamed about forever. I had a little Honda Trail 70 that wouldn't die, but I looked like a monkey fucking a football riding it. Those days were over.

I was on an adrenaline high and had to try it out right fucking now. We lived on a 600 acre farm so I had plenty of room to ride. I headed behind the barn and down a long terraced slope. Running WFO in 4th I was catching some pretty good air off the terraces, then I hit the last one about 60yds before a ditch and a 5 strand barbed wire fence. That last terrace was sloped significantly higher than the others and I when I landed the left side of the handlebar snapped off in my hand. HOLY SHIT! Not good, not good! Somehow I managed not to wipe out when I landed, but I'm hauling ass wobbling all over the place and there's a ditch/barbed wire rapidly approaching. I can't use the clutch because the sonofabith snapped off in my hand. If I open my hand to pull the handle I'll drop it and then I'm fucked royal.

Ditch getting close, that wire looks pretty f'n tight and I'm NOT going to stop before I get there. I throttle back, brake hard and try to turn right still in 4th. It's not easy because I'm off balance leaning forward and only have my right hand semi-controlling the bike. My heart is pounding, things are starting to go slo-mo and I know that ain't good. BTW, did I mention I'm not wearing a helmet? Because I'm not wearing a helmet. The ditch is danger close. Fuck it. All or nothing. I'll take the ditch but screw that fence. I try to lay it over, slide in and hope the ditch is deep enough I stay in there. I'm leaning as hard as I can pushing hard on the bar, but the bike doesn't go down. Instead, the back tire digs in and I make a hard right flat track turn staying about 3 feet away from the ditch. 

When I finally stopped I was shaking and sweating. I should have been dead and sliced up into chunks. I took a good long piss and after I got my shit together managed to get the bike started then rode to the barn where I burned 5 or 6 welding rods putting the handlebars back together. Looked ugly, but it never broke again.

Anyway, that was one of the times I almost died.

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Knoxtnhorn

Knoxtnhorn 6079

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Drunken inner-tubing in Townsend, TN about 15 years ago.  We get to a bend that has a rope swing.  Swing is tied to a tree limb about 50 feet up.  One is to swing from a dock out into the deep part of the river.  As I'm about to take my turn, I'm implored to take the swing up a hill behind the dock and try from there.  Well, seeing as how I suck at physics, I don't realize how much momentum I'm going to get when I swing from a distance 20 feet (or so) back and 30 feet (or so) higher.  As I'm coming down, I realize I'm going far to fast to keep my grip on the rope.  I slip off at an angle in which the back of my head actually brushes a boulder leading into the river.  Still gives me goosebumps when I think about it.

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Steamboat1874

Steamboat1874 4136

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I was the roadie for Extreme Heat back in 86....

The lead singer and I were traveling to SA for a gig at around 4:30 PM on a Friday down IH35 near mile marker 221.

In a ford van carrying a lot of equipment. We are in the left lane and a girl comes up beside us in the right lane and all of a sudden she pulls over right into the right front fender of my van going around 70 miles per hour. Next thing I know we are now going side ways in the grass median at an angle where we are going to come out in the northbound lanes and hit the asphalt which would cause us to roll. Fortunately and luckily I turned the steering wheel at the exact moment we hit the asphalt to keep us from rolling and there was just enough of a  gap in the traffic that i could get us all of the way across and into the grass on the other side where we continued to fishtail like crazy until i got it under control and was able to stop. I never touched the brake until we were on the other side.

The girl's car spun out and remained in the median (she was lucky).

Turns out she was around 15 years old and driving a stolen car.

That night someone broke into my van during the gig and stole some of our personal stuff. 

The next day OU kicked our ass and Dykstra hit that home run to beat the Astros in the playoffs.

A shitty weekend for sure but it could have been a lot worse.

 

The end.

 

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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1 minute ago, Steamboat1874 said:

I was the roadie for Extreme Heat back in 86....

The lead singer and I were traveling to SA for a gig at around 4:30 PM on a Friday down IH35 near mile marker 221.

In a ford van carrying a lot of equipment. We are in the left lane and a girl comes up beside us in the right lane and all of a sudden she pulls over right into the right front fender of my van going around 70 miles per hour. Next thing I know we are now going side ways in the grass median at an angle where we are going to come out in the northbound lanes and hit the asphalt which would cause us to roll. Fortunately and luckily I turned the steering wheel at the exact moment we hit the asphalt to keep us from rolling and there was just enough of a  gap in the traffic that i could get us all of the way across and into the grass on the other side where we continued to fishtail like crazy until i got it under control and was able to stop. I never touched the brake until we were on the other side.

The girl's car spun out and remained in the median (she was lucky).

Turns out she was around 15 years old and driving a stolen car.

That night someone broke into my van during the gig and stole some of our personal stuff. 

The next day OU kicked our ass and Dykstra hit that home run to beat the Astros in the playoffs.

A shitty weekend for sure but it could have been a lot worse.

 

The end.

 

Or just the beginning of the rest of your life ?

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honolulu horn

honolulu horn 6166

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A bunch of buddies and me left UT after our freshman year for a trip to Costa Rica. After bumbling around the country for a week, we took a small plane to Golfito and were supposed to meet some guy with a truck to get to some guy's farm on the coast for some reason. That's about as well-planned as the trip was. We pile into the back of his small Izuzu pickup for the 3 hour ride to the farm. We head straight into the jungle and after about 2 hours the skies just opened up. Nightfall, tearing through the jungle, sheets of rain but covered by the camper top. All of a sudden the dumbass driver slams right into a raging flash flooded river. Immediately the truck bolts 90 degrees and we go headfirst down the river in the truck. We all ditch the truck as the camper top fills with water and try our best to get to the riverbank, clutching at logs or anything to get us to the side. It's pitch black; the only thing visible, save for a few fading lights on the truck, is when lightning would flash. I vividly remember seeing my buddy holding on to the truck's windshield wiper at the flash of lightning, water covering him up as we bobbled down the river. Somehow we all made it to the bank in one piece. Truck and all of our gear, food, etc was either trashed or floated downstream. We managed to find a farmer's house not too far away who put us put us up for the night in his barn's attic. Amazing that we all lived.

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Hanrahan

Hanrahan 1306

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47 minutes ago, Steamboat1874 said:

I was the roadie for Extreme Heat back in 86....

The lead singer and I were traveling to SA for a gig at around 4:30 PM on a Friday down IH35 near mile marker 221.

In a ford van carrying a lot of equipment. We are in the left lane and a girl comes up beside us in the right lane and all of a sudden she pulls over right into the right front fender of my van going around 70 miles per hour. Next thing I know we are now going side ways in the grass median at an angle where we are going to come out in the northbound lanes and hit the asphalt which would cause us to roll. Fortunately and luckily I turned the steering wheel at the exact moment we hit the asphalt to keep us from rolling and there was just enough of a  gap in the traffic that i could get us all of the way across and into the grass on the other side where we continued to fishtail like crazy until i got it under control and was able to stop. I never touched the brake until we were on the other side.

The girl's car spun out and remained in the median (she was lucky).

Turns out she was around 15 years old and driving a stolen car.

That night someone broke into my van during the gig and stole some of our personal stuff. 

The next day OU kicked our ass and Dykstra hit that home run to beat the Astros in the playoffs.

A shitty weekend for sure but it could have been a lot worse.

 

The end.

 

You were in a van full of equipment on 35 in the left lane and got passed by a girl in the right lane?  100% you fault.

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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22 minutes ago, Steamboat1874 said:

Hardly

I was traveling the speed limit and not impeding any traffic......she was unlicensed, speeding and driving a stolen car.   

If you were traveling the speed limit in the left lane of a divided highway it's on you brah......

The struggle is real, just yanking yer chain.

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conVINCEd

conVINCEd 21474

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1.6 years old.  Skiing for the first time.  Fell 30 ft. off the chairlift when it stopped and I was messing with my poles and not holding on to the center pole.  Broken ribs and concussion.  

2.  Senior in high school with some friends at Lake Texoma.  We were drinking.  There was a 20 ft. rock/cliff by the campsite.  I decided that jumping off of it into the water would impress the young ladies with us.  Was going to dive, but changed my mind at the last minute and went feet first.  Landed it 3 ft. of water and broke multiple bones in my foot.  Would be dead or a quadraplegic if I dove head first.

3. Freshman year at UT.  I was home for the weekend and decided to stay in Dallas Sunday night and wake up real early and drive back Monday morning.  Left at 4:00 a.m.  Somewhere between Waco and Temple I fell asleep.  I was awakened by the jolting of the car going from pavement onto the grass median.  I was about 10 ft. from crossing the median completely into oncoming traffic.  Jerked the wheel to prevent that from happening, and  went into a spin across the correct side of the highway and onto the shoulder.  I was fine, car was fine.  Pulled over at the next gas station and bought whatever version of legal speed (NoDoze?) they were selling and took two of them.  Didn't sleep for 2 days.

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AM Wood

AM Wood 335

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there was a bully in junior high that ran into a barbed wire fence on his mini bike, no helmet. caught it right at the mouth and going back to his ears. he was being a dick to my best friend and i so we went ahead and called him scarface. he and his friend each pulled out knives but didn't have the balls to do anything. we went home and got baseball bats and pushed them around their front yard for a bit embarrassing them in front of their little burn-out friends. drool story, crow.

 

 

edit: btw, that was not my brush with anything. it was just a dovetailing  barbed wire themed story.

Edited by AM Wood
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SHOOTER12

SHOOTER12 8840

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1 hour ago, honolulu horn said:

A bunch of buddies and me left UT after our freshman year for a trip to Costa Rica. After bumbling around the country for a week, we took a small plane to Golfito and were supposed to meet some guy with a truck to get to some guy's farm on the coast for some reason. That's about as well-planned as the trip was. We pile into the back of his small Izuzu pickup for the 3 hour ride to the farm. We head straight into the jungle and after about 2 hours the skies just opened up. Nightfall, tearing through the jungle, sheets of rain but covered by the camper top. All of a sudden the dumbass driver slams right into a raging flash flooded river. Immediately the truck bolts 90 degrees and we go headfirst down the river in the truck. We all ditch the truck as the camper top fills with water and try our best to get to the riverbank, clutching at logs or anything to get us to the side. It's pitch black; the only thing visible, save for a few fading lights on the truck, is when lightning would flash. I vividly remember seeing my buddy holding on to the truck's windshield wiper at the flash of lightning, water covering him up as we bobbled down the river. Somehow we all made it to the bank in one piece. Truck and all of our gear, food, etc was either trashed or floated downstream. We managed to find a farmer's house not too far away who put us put us up for the night in his barn's attic. Amazing that we all lived.

So the foreign version of the farmers daughter story eh?

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UncleCharlie

UncleCharlie 334

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2 hours ago, honolulu horn said:

A bunch of buddies and me left UT after our freshman year for a trip to Costa Rica. After bumbling around the country for a week, we took a small plane to Golfito and were supposed to meet some guy with a truck to get to some guy's farm on the coast for some reason. That's about as well-planned as the trip was. We pile into the back of his small Izuzu pickup for the 3 hour ride to the farm. We head straight into the jungle and after about 2 hours the skies just opened up. Nightfall, tearing through the jungle, sheets of rain but covered by the camper top. All of a sudden the dumbass driver slams right into a raging flash flooded river. Immediately the truck bolts 90 degrees and we go headfirst down the river in the truck. We all ditch the truck as the camper top fills with water and try our best to get to the riverbank, clutching at logs or anything to get us to the side. It's pitch black; the only thing visible, save for a few fading lights on the truck, is when lightning would flash. I vividly remember seeing my buddy holding on to the truck's windshield wiper at the flash of lightning, water covering him up as we bobbled down the river. Somehow we all made it to the bank in one piece. Truck and all of our gear, food, etc was either trashed or floated downstream. We managed to find a farmer's house not too far away who put us put us up for the night in his barn's attic. Amazing that we all lived.

Did the farmer have a daughter?

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smuggs

smuggs 9354

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41 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

3. Freshman year at UT.  I was home for the weekend and decided to stay in Dallas Sunday night and wake up real early and drive back Monday morning.  Left at 4:00 a.m.  Somewhere between Waco and Temple I fell asleep.  I was awakened by the jolting of the car going from pavement onto the grass median.  I was about 10 ft. from crossing the median completely into oncoming traffic.  Jerked the wheel to prevent that from happening, and  went into a spin across the correct side of the highway and onto the shoulder.  I was fine, car was fine.  Pulled over at the next gas station and bought whatever version of legal speed (NoDoze?) they were selling and took two of them.  Didn't sleep for 2 days.

VillainousChiefDiplodocus-max-1mb.gif

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RPM

RPM 26382

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4 hours ago, LonghornJones said:

What sort of delivery company was the truck for?

A trucking company delivering loaded trailers to the Port of Houston and brought empty ones back to the terminal at 59 & 610. But it was a scam. My Dad and the terminal manager had a deal where they would use a company truck for the work but bill it to his lease truck and split the money. That worked for a couple years until the terminal manager quit.

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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1 hour ago, Steamboat1874 said:

Not in 1986.

It's always been that way. I can remember reading  local, county bi weekly paper back in the mid to late 70's when they listed traffic stops, and people would actually get tickets for "traveling in the left hand lane, impeding traffic.

 

It's a pretty old rule of the road law.

Edited by Onboard 2.0
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NeverMarryAStripper

NeverMarryAStripper 22000

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, conVINCEd said:

1.6 years old.  Skiing for the first time.  Fell 30 ft. off the chairlift when it stopped and I was messing with my poles and not holding on to the center pole.  Broken ribs and concussion. 

That's pretty much on your parents for letting you ride a chairlift when you were 1.6 years old

Edited by NeverMarryAStripper
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Call

Call 393

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14 hours ago, RPM said:

or "Hold my beer and watch this"

I was 14 and my Dad bought an old '59 International truck to lease out as a local delivery to the company he worked for. One of his get rich quick schemes, but I digress. While making the deal he spotted an old Kawasaki 175 dirt bike and made the guy throw it in the deal. HOT DAMN! Dad didn't buy cool shit often, but this was excellent! It was old. The blue paint was chipped and scratched up. It was way past it's prime, dirty, dinged and rusty. But this was my first legitimate dirt bike that I had dreamed about forever. I had a little Honda Trail 70 that wouldn't die, but I looked like a monkey fucking a football riding it. Those days were over.

I was on an adrenaline high and had to try it out right fucking now. We lived on a 600 acre farm so I had plenty of room to ride. I headed behind the barn and down a long terraced slope. Running WFO in 4th I was catching some pretty good air off the terraces, then I hit the last one about 60yds before a ditch and a 5 strand barbed wire fence. That last terrace was sloped significantly higher than the others and I when I landed the left side of the handlebar snapped off in my hand. HOLY SHIT! Not good, not good! Somehow I managed not to wipe out when I landed, but I'm hauling ass wobbling all over the place and there's a ditch/barbed wire rapidly approaching. I can't use the clutch because the sonofabith snapped off in my hand. If I open my hand to pull the handle I'll drop it and then I'm fucked royal.

Ditch getting close, that wire looks pretty f'n tight and I'm NOT going to stop before I get there. I throttle back, brake hard and try to turn right still in 4th. It's not easy because I'm off balance leaning forward and only have my right hand semi-controlling the bike. My heart is pounding, things are starting to go slo-mo and I know that ain't good. BTW, did I mention I'm not wearing a helmet? Because I'm not wearing a helmet. The ditch is danger close. Fuck it. All or nothing. I'll take the ditch but screw that fence. I try to lay it over, slide in and hope the ditch is deep enough I stay in there. I'm leaning as hard as I can pushing hard on the bar, but the bike doesn't go down. Instead, the back tire digs in and I make a hard right flat track turn staying about 3 feet away from the ditch. 

When I finally stopped I was shaking and sweating. I should have been dead and sliced up into chunks. I took a good long piss and after I got my shit together managed to get the bike started then rode to the barn where I burned 5 or 6 welding rods putting the handlebars back together. Looked ugly, but it never broke again.

Anyway, that was one of the times I almost died.

Sounds like a Jimmy/Dirtbike story. 

 

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46377

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7 hours ago, LW Goatman said:

Somebody on the scat site told an epic tale about when he was held hostage, stabbed or shot, and driven around to different ATMs to pull money. 

I told the story, but it wasn't about me.  That was Michael Hall (lead singer and songwriter for The Wild Seeds and editor at Texas Monthly) in Mexico City for a boxing match.  He was travelling with Jan Reed, another Austin guy.  As Mike told the story to me, they were kidnapped by thugs in a fake taxi, driven to various ATMs where they drained their debit cards, then taken to a remote area outside of the city.  Jan fancied himself an amateur boxer, and when one of the kidnappers pulled a pistol, Jan just assumed they were about to be executed, so he took a swing at the guy who then shot Jan in the gut.  For whatever reason the bad guys just took off instead of finishing the job, and as luck would have it, a US Navy doctor who lived nearby heard the shot, found them, administered first aid and got Jan to a hospital, where he survived.

I think Mike eventually wrote a piece in Texas Monthly about the incident, but I can't find it.  There might be digital archives that google doesn't scour, I don't know.

Edited by jimmyjazz
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butthurt

butthurt 1531

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One day about ten years ago I was laying on my couch watching tv in my apartment, when my downstairs neighbor, who was "cleaning his rifle" shot through my floor, ceiling fan, and through the ceiling about four foot from me. Now I'm not much of a fighter, but it took everything I had not knock the shit out of him.

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Deej

Deej 77012

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Jumped of the Llano river dam, just above the old Dabb's Hotel. As I pushed off, I slip on the algae coating the rollover dam. Just missed hitting the old rebar sticking out of the concrete, and hit the water with my ribcage. Took the wind right out of me. If four people hadn't jumped in to pull me out, I'd have been done. Was black and blue for weeks.

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tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 77676

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coming in from an offshore hitch and the helicopter decides to die out. pilot is hitting 'start' button like mad and calling in our soon to be 'touchdown' in the gulf. tells us to get ready for a hard landing and waiting before getting out, don't get caught up in the helo blade.

helicopter started up again and we made it to the heliport 

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

coming in from an offshore hitch and the helicopter decides to die out. pilot is hitting 'start' button like mad and calling in our soon to be 'touchdown' in the gulf. tells us to get ready for a hard landing and waiting before getting out, don't get caught up in the helo blade.

helicopter started up again and we made it to the heliport 

Ohhhh well it started back up ??... you didn't have to ditch ?   yaaaaawn.....

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lateshow

lateshow 1308

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15 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

coming in from an offshore hitch and the helicopter decides to die out. pilot is hitting 'start' button like mad and calling in our soon to be 'touchdown' in the gulf. tells us to get ready for a hard landing and waiting before getting out, don't get caught up in the helo blade.

helicopter started up again and we made it to the heliport 

What is this? The "I almost, almost died" thread? 

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GringoSalado

GringoSalado 1652

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Told this story on the scat site...

Some years ago I took up road racing (like on crotch-rockets) with some friends of mine. Buddy sold me his track bike, a CBR900. That model came with an uncommon front wheel size, but was a great track bike otherwise, so it was very common to swap the front end from a GSXR750, which my friend had done.

The decision that almost killed me was to buy, and start racing, this bike but temporarily leave it in the care of my buddy. So I hadn't yet possessed the bike, done the maintenance on it, anything like that. So I didn't notice that one front brake line (these bikes have dual brake calipers, one on each side of the wheel) was rubbing the tire, but only when the forks were very compressed. Of course the forks compress quite a bit every time you get hard on the brakes, but at rest the brake lines looked fine and were routed where they should be.

The track we rode at had one long straight, at my skill level I was typically at about 135 mph when I hit my braking point at the end of that straight. During my third or fourth ever track day I grabbed a big handful of front brake at the end of the front straight, going about 135, and the lever goes all the way to the grip with zero resistance. I have no brakes. None at all. Right at that moment I was sure I was going to die.

Obviously I didn't, I just went off the track into the mesquite and sagebrush going 135 mph (another life saver was this track had tons of run off and no barriers of any kind unlike many similar facilities where I would have t-boned a concrete barrier). Maybe years of off road racing and riding helped, I don't know, but I stayed with it until I was down to about 20 mph or so, the suspension bottoming so violently I heard metal-on-metal clanks, at which point I just deliriously let go of the bike in a swan-dive like motion.

 

I pick everything up and make my way back to the pits where everybody is waiting for me. Oddly, or not, I could hardly contain my laughter and kept breaking out in a teen-girl giggle every few seconds. Enjoyed about 30 minutes worth of adrenaline-serenity, or something, because I didn't die.

 

 

that's all I got

 

edit to add: rear brakes on these bikes don't do much but I did hit it (and had the presence of mind to downshift like crazy), and it should be obvious that point of failure was the tire eventually rubbed a hole in the brake line.

Edited by GringoSalado
ou sucks
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Brew

Brew 3049

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My parents bought me a Z28 for high school graduation. They lived in the country and there was about a 10 mile winding road from the interstate to their house. I would set a timer and see how quickly I could make it end to end late at night where I could always see cars coming in the corners. One night after dropping my GF (now wife) off I lost it coming out of the longest straightaway on the road, flew off the corner through someone’s front yard and hit a tree head on who knows how fast with no seatbelt on. It pushed the motor into the dashboard and into the passenger seat, the shifter into the back seat, broke the seat frames, and twisted the car into almost a v shape. Somehow I hit the airbag, broke the steering column and ended up wedged between it and the door.

The cops told me later that they assumed I was dead when they got there and there was absolutely no way I should have survived it. Not wearing a seatbelt that night was probably the only way I did. I didn’t break anything and walked out of the hospital the next day although I still have issues with the shoulder/arm that hit first. The tree is still standing although it has no bark on the bottom 3-4 feet and is deformed.

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