What's the scariest thing you have ever done.

[Bill Douglas]

What's the scariest thing you have ever done?

For me. A number of years ago a certain well know gang's car broke down in my old neigbourhod. I parked my car a few blocks away then made my way to the gang car looking left and right for anyone wearing a patch. Next was the scary bit. I spray painted certain words with letters 2 feet high down the sides of the car and other words over the hood, roof and trunk. Then I ran, man did I run. I did a side streets course back to my car and got the hell outa there.

[masraum]

Why?

[WolfeMacleod]

I got married once...

[wdfifteen]

There are a couple.
Once I was flying when I had about 80 hours. One morning I took off an it looked like I was flying into clouds almost immediately, so I did a 180 like you are supposed to. But what was happening was not clouds coming in, but fog forming all around me. Within minutes I couldn't see the ends of the wings. I was still in the local area and got on the com channel for the little airport. I flew around until they thought they could hear me and talked me closer. I did a pass and I thought I had myself oriented on the strip. It is terrifying when you can't see a horizon and have to depend on the gauges to tell you whether your are going up, down, or sideways and you have to depend on the guys on the ground to tell you if you are lined up with the runway. Went around by pure calculations, timing, and guesswork and hoped I was aligned with the strip. When I finally saw the ground I was way short and finally made it to the strip with the throttle wide open and the stick all the way back.
I went snorkeling off the coast of Costa Rica and they took us out in 4 or 5 boats with 6 people in each one. They were supposed to drop us off over the reef and go anchor in this channel that went through the reef where the anchors wouldn't hurt anything. Our captain pulled up and let us out, but we were in the channel. We were amateurs and had no idea what was happening. All I knew was the bottom didn't look like a reef, it looked like a lawn in a hurricane - long grass being blown hard sideways. It turned out our guy dumped us in the channel and the tide was coming in. When I got tired of looking at the grass I looked up and there was nothing. No boat, no beach, no nothing but open ocean. I spotted another guy from our boat and then another and eventually we all got together and were like WTF are we going to die?? After about an hour of floating there waiting for the first shark hit one of the boats found us and the captain was ripping our asses for swimming away from the boat, but we were washed in by the current we weren't swimming. IN fact the tide was coming in and the current was pushing toward the beach and in another half an hour we would have been able to see the beach, but we didn't know that.

[gshase]

Signed my first student off to solo.

[HardDrive]

Between the motorcycles, the sport cars, the mountain climbing....hard to pick.

There are some things I did when I was young, stupid and on drugs in Detroit that scare me. I was not scared at the time, but later realized how dangerous it was. I walked into some guys private club in our neighborhood to ask him if we could use the space for a rave party. The owner and his friends were some serious looking guys. Clearly making good money, and it wasn't from their day jobs. The guy didn't get mad, but he just said 'no' and stared at us, and not another word. They could have shot us dead, and not one would have said a word.

I was at a party where there was a argument over a cocaine deal gone wrong. It got very serious, very quick, and women were holding their guys hands away from their guns and pleading with them to not shoot anyone. I wasn't involved, but if the bullets started flying, it would have been mayhem.

[Bill Douglas]

LOL, keep 'em coming.

[LeeH]

This was 8 months ago and still bugging me.

[Evans, Marv]

Not the most dangerous thing, but one that could have ended up the wrong way. I was in Tikal, Guatamala in '73 staying at a small hotel for a few days. The manager was a tall, blond, good looking German girl. She & I sort of hit it off and talked quite a lot from the first day I was there. The second evening I was setting in the "setting room" talking to a bunch of other people staying there. One of the guys who worked there ambled in to the kitchen. A few minutes later the "engineer" who maintained the place went in to the kitchen. All of a sudden there were sounds of grunting & scuffling. I got up & went into the kitchen to see what was up. The "engineer" was scuffling with the other guy who had a big kitchen knife tryiing to stab the "engineer" guy. I went in & grabbed the guy's hand with the knife in it, rolled it out of his hand & flipped him over my shoulder onto the floor & held him there. The "engiineer" guy got the lady manager who called the soldiers to take the guy away to their jail (the soldiers were also the cops). The next evening the manager lady said there was a marimba party across the field from the hotel (100 yds. +) & asked me if I wanted to go. I said yes. Guess who was there with all his friends, the guy with the knife from the night before who they had already let out of jail. I kept an eye on him & he & his friends kept their eyes on me & the manager lady. They proceeded to get drunk as skunks and roudy. After a while things looked like they were on the verge of getting out of control & I suggested to the manager lady & the rest of the gringos there, it was time to leave. We had to walk across the field with no lights & kept listening for sounds of anybody following us. There wasn't. They were probably more interested in getting drunker. We made it back to the hotel OK. I was glad those guys were drunk & getting a whole lot drunker.

[Hard-Deck]

This exact thing happened to me departing Jackson Hole in a C172 with 120hrs in the logbook.

The next scariest thing happened 5 years later when I took my first night CAT shot.

It involves north Idaho, a Cessna 150, a microburst, me and an instructor in said 150, 30 feet above the runway with a 15 degree nose down pitch and 15 degrees right of the runway and the stall horn making its noise. That was the only time I ever thought I was going to die, or even worse, damage a rental plane.



Jackson

[maxnine11]

What's the scariest thing you have ever done.

I think I'll wait and post it in the "What's the stupidest thing you have ever done" thread .

[aap1966]

Motorbikes, parachuting, caving, kayaking, ....all have had their moments.

Scariest moment of my life was driving in the country, wife asleep in the front, 2 daughters asleep in the back. A side road was merging with the main road I was on up ahead. I was aware of a car on the side road, but I was ahead of him and would pass the merge well ahead of him. At the last moment (he was behind me, trees between us, etc) I realised this guy had decided to race me to the merge.
I stood on the brakes to let him shoot onto the road ahead of me. Missed by a good 6 or 7 feet.
The scary bit?
If I hadn't been watching the traffic behind me and taken evasive action, he would have T-boned me and wiped out my whole family. His speed would have ensured it was a "non-survivable".

The only thing that still stirs me when I think about it.

[Dottore]

A decompression dive in a Boeing 757. From 35,000 feet to 10,000 feet in about two minutes. Strait down. Without warning. Everything that wasn't bolted on and buckled in ended up on the back bulkhead. So terrifying that most of the passengers collectively shat their pants. By the time we pulled out of the dive the stench was unbearable.

[Rick V]

Almost pulled the trigger on someone who had to make a decision as to continue his direction or get shot.
My daughter was involved so yes I would have let the hammer fall. Very bad feeling to be looking across the sights, have a human acquired, the hammer back and the safety off......

[fred cook]

One night I missed the liberty boat back to the ship (Navy) and had to spend the night on the docks in Singapore. Everyone else had already gone back on board so I was by myself. Man was I glad to see the boat the next morning when it made the first run! The only good thing was that I was not listed as AWOL!

[imcarthur]

1996. We were staying at a resort in the Archipelago Perlas in the Gulf of Panama south of Panama. A mile off the island was a small sandy deserted flowerpot island. I got the brainwave to have a Robinson Caruso fantasy with my wife. I hired a boat to take us over, drop us off & pick us up hours later for $35. You know: wink, wink, nudge, nudge. No one spoke English but I did manage to communicate what I wanted. They dropped us off in a modern 30 ft fishing boat by idling close & we dropped into the water & waded in to the sandy beach.

Things went very well . . . until the pickup time.

A storm was rolling in & the waves had grown a bit. A boatman returned in a very narrow 20 ft dugout canoe with an outboard on the back. As he beached it water came washing in. We clambered aboard. There was only one lifejacket & my wife put that on. The boatman pointed at me & at a can in the bottom (next to a dead fish floating around) & shouted "agua" & made bailing motions as he shoved off. The swells were now 6 - 8 ft. I faced aft & bailed like a maniac & my wife held on so hard, chunks of the rotting gunwales came off in her hands. The boatman spoke no English but I could tell that he was seriously tense. The waves looked mountainous & I could see our doom in every one as we rose on the peaks & crashed down in the troughs.

Twenty very, very scary minutes later, we pulled into the lee of a point on the resort island. We survived. As a btw, the resort & the flowerpot island were used in one of the Survivor programs.



Ian

[slow&rusty]

Discovery of the internet

[dondarnell]

Jumping out of c-130 and bad door exit timing on the part of jumpmaster resulted in my canopy opening together with another jumper. In the 20-30 seconds we had til we hit the ground, we dropped our weapons and gear and discussed which side to PLF on. The training works. We were banged up but okay. 2 feet of snow on the DZ helped.

[fastfredracing]

I bought my first house in my mid 20's. It was a rundown house in the City, and I am a country boy at heart. It was already a stressful situation for me, but I remember watching my girlfriend at the time marching her belongings up the stairs to move in, and thinking to myself "Oh god, what have I done" .
20 years later, all is well, I am still with her, and the house turned out to be the start of my rental house biz.

[GH85Carrera]

I guess I live a very sheltered live. I like it that way.

My scariest thing was hurtling down the back stretch toward the banked curves flat out in 5th gear at nearly 5,000 RPM at Charlotte Super-speedway. The instructor saying whatever you do don't hit the brakes. My brain said you idiot you are going faster than I had ever been in my 911 and there is a major curve ahead. After a few laps it was a blast.