I've narrowly avoided being killed a couple of times. The last time that I can remember was when we crossed a train tracks at night and the lights and crossing arm never triggered. But that was not scary until afterwards.

The most scared I've ever been was at Pismo Beach, 1986, WOT on my Honda ATC 250R headed East away from the ocean. Suddenly the sand just dropped away, and I literally can only see sky below me, no sense of how high I was. I think it had to be 5-6 seconds before I hit and bounced, then rolled and rolled. We paced it off after I found my buddy. Had to be at least 50 feet but neither of us could breathe or think clearly for about 10 minutes or so. I remember looking around and not seeing him anywhere in sight.

Considering what others have been through I've lived a fairly fortunate life, although I do have some "close calls" that could of gotten me into some trouble.

What I find interesting is how even though these events happened for me, 10 - 15 years ago, when you think about it, they still freak you out.

You think how everything could be different if it had been a few inches or a few feet or a couple seconds different.

I can recall one instance when I was maybe 8 - 10 years old?

I was playing baseball for a team, and the older kids were in the outfield with a coach just cranking hits out to them in the field. I wanted some practice and started running into the outfield with my back to the batter.

For some reason I specifically recall turning around but with my glove at my face. I didn't do that for safety, I just thought it would be funny. Spinning around in a ready position with the glove at my face. Just goofy kid stuff.

Well the second I turned around a line drive landed right in my glove, exactly where the back of my head would of been.

Not really scary, but a little freaky when you think back to it.

Weird.

Three years ago in my Porsche 944 putting out garage sale signs early on a Friday morning, and some idiot runs a stop sign into the passenger side front tire of my car.....we were both doing at least 60MPH. My head hit the butt cushion of the passenger seat, and I was looking at nothing but blue sky up through the windshield (my setabelt was on, but didn't catch me going right). I thought I was dead, and would start looking down at the car from 20 ft overhead at any second. I ended up sliding 100 ft out into a bean field and remember seeing the end of the hood smoking (thinking it was on fire). I was able to get out in a hurry, and stand for a minute or two between the door and the roof, before the black fog started rolling in my head, and I had to sit before I fell face forward in the beans. Turned out, I stood up with a shattered pelvis and 17 broken bones with internal bleeding, but not a drop of visible blood.

First time ever in Chicago, flew in rented a car and went to my business convention. Leaving, I got lost and ended up in Southside around Cabrini Green with an empty gas tank. Pulled into a gas station and two guys started walking towards the car. I quickly got back in the car and drove away....without any gas. Got even more lost and truly thought I was going to get killed. Gang bangers standing on corners looking really unfriendly.

It goes on....but I made it back to my hotel at the airport still with an empty tank.

Back in high school a buddy was repainting his car. Candy Apple Red. We used drop cloths to cover the work bench and floors in his dads garage to to protect them from the mess we created. The four of us finished up and decide to go for a ride in another car. The paint that was all over us and our cloths had dried sufficiently that we did not feel the need to clean up. There was an old wine bottle on the floor of the back seat. The two of us back there decided to put on a silhouette show for the car following us with one pretending to bludgeon the other. Woops, it was the county sheriff. On come the lights and we pull over to explain. I suppose he thought we had just murdered someone and were all covered in blood. He had his gun drawn and was visibly shaking. We were afraid he was going to accidentally pull the trigger. With our hands in the air he had us move away from the car. When he found no bloody body in the back seat we finally were able to convince him it was just paint and nobody was hurt.

My first parachute malfunction (sport jumping) (of six) >> this was back in 1976 > I was jumping a old school rig > main parachute on your back and belly mounted reserve. Had a gross malfunction on my "square" so I cut away [activated canopy release "Capewells" > went back into free fall >> pulled my reserve >> and NOTHING happened....reserve stayed closed....my life flashed before my eyes... like a fast forward video of things I did as a kid ... freeze frame... then another event... and another....I sensed I was falling to my death..

this probably went on for a micro-second >> I smacked the reserve and the pilot chute launched >> reserve opened OK...

Drank some serious beer that night...

Because you were!?!

Except for the wifi issues, wow: Chills.

I am on a phoncon meeting listening to the most important person in the world drone on. I let out a, "no *****" when I read you post.

Thank god for mute.

Took a 300' fall in the Cascades, lots of broken stuff, punctured lung, etc. No flashing of my life experience during the fall, but instead a profound disappointment that I had just killed myself. When I awoke I was thrilled and then had to settled down for a long wait cause I wasn't going anywhere on my own. Got a helo ride after 30 hrs. Yeah AF Para-rescue!!

Scariest feeling was the return trip down the Kahiltna glacier after climbing Denali, crossing sagging snow bridges with no choice but to haul ass and hope it worked out. Way scarier than the fall 5 years earlier.

When I was 20 I flew up to Bridgeport, CA with two friends for a backpacking trip in the Yosemite high country. Since we couldn't drive my friend's plane to the trail head, we needed to bum a ride. We found a guy our age to drive us up in his Ford F250. The three of us sat in back. He thought it would be fun to show us how fast he could drive a pickup truck on twisty roads. It was 11PM and he was drunk.

The last thing I saw was the dark, jagged silhouette of the high sierra doing a 360 as the truck flipped off the road. I went face first into the desert sand and the truck landed on me, driving me into the ground. No one else was hurt. When they asked where I hurt, I made it easy by saying my left arm did not hurt.

I was in the middle of nowhere. Eventually, a station wagon came by and got me into town. But there was nothing they could do for me, aside from a blood transfusion. Seems I was bleeding somewhere inside. And on a scale of 1 to 10 on the pain meter, I was in Spinal Tap territory. Finally, an ambulance arrived and I got to the hospital in Reno at 7AM. I never slept or passed out all night. I knew if I did I would not wake up.

I was rushed into surgery immediately where they sewed up my liver and spleen, as well as my face and numerous other places, and set broken bones. The doctor said he'd never seen similar injuries on a live person. Yeah, that was a long (and scary) night.

Back in the early 70's when I was 22, I had a 427 Vette. Coming home late one night in my general neighborhood, there was a super-long street where I always punched it and went through a few gears. As I flew by a little dead-end side street about 60, I caught a glimps of a cop sitting in his car with the dome light on, probably doing some paperwork. By the time I was about a block past, in my rearview I saw him fly onto the street with lights-a-flashing. Since I was far enough ahead, I layed into the throttle hard again and started putting more distance between us. Then I started turns onto various streets, zig-zagging and doubling back and getting closer to my house. There was no way he could figure out where I went.... so I thought. I pulled into my driveway and damn if the old-man hadn't left his truck parked right in front of the garage. No time to move the truck and tuck my Vette into the garage, so I drove across the lawn and squeezed in between some bushes and the garage, sort of hiding the car but not completely. Got out, ran and hid in the bushes and waited. And waited ... and waited. Nothing. Just the sounds of 'plink, plink, plink' as the headers cooled off. Then, just about the time I felt 'safe', I see a spotlight from a police cruiser prowling down my street looking down driveways on each side. My heart was beating 180 and I couldn't catch my breath. That's it I figured! I'm toast. BUT, just 2 houses before mine, he gave up and shut off his spotlight, punched it and went on down the street. I quickly moved the old man's truck back, got the garage doors open and squeezed the Vette inside. There it stayed for a full 2-weeks before I went out cruising again! Worried about it for days, but no repercussions, lucky me!

Driving into Paris the day after 9/11. Muslims gathering in large numbers in the street outside our hotel cheering with anti-American signs. There were no rooms vacant because nobody could fly out. 25 Americans in the lobby all trying to borrow my satellite phone to call home. No place to stay. Not flights out. Entranced Muslim mobs chanting ant-American slogans in multiple languages. We ended up sharing a room with some very nice people from the mid-west and all the Americans stuck together like glue for 5 days.

Some self professed ninja on the internet who lived in a fire hall and had a 928 tried to kill me one time... I think he was using witchcraft. Luckily I was able to fight him off with a battle shark I had in my bathtub...

I passed out and stopped breathing from Carbon Monoxide poisoning in the family sailboat when I was 9.

We were motoring back to the harbor and the tail wind was blowing exhaust from the outboard motor into the cabin when I was taking a nap.

Thank goodness my father checked on me and performed mouth to mouth to get me breathing again which saved my life.

I am a borderline aquaphobe, but I keep trying. Stuff that doesn't bother other people scares the bejeezuz out of me. About two years after the movie "Open Water" (which gave me nightmares) came out I went snorkeling off the coast of Mexico. There were four boats with about 6 people in each one. So we got to the reef and it was far enough out that we couldn't see land. The boats stopped and everyone jumped out. The water was about 10-12 feet deep and all I could see on the bottom was grass with water flowing over it so fast it was practically horizontal. We paddled around looking for the reef and never found it. I poked my head up after a while and looked around and - nothing. No boat, no people, just water. After a while I heard one of the other people shout and we all got together and were all just WFF? Where is everyone? We were there for a long time before eventually one of the boats came by and found us.
Apparently there are channels in the reef that are deeper and have no coral. The tide water flows in and out through these channels with the tide. Our doofus boat driver had let us out in the channel instead of on the reef. The tide was coming in and the water was moving fast. It washed us out of site of the boats before anyone figured out they were missing six people.
I've never felt so sure I was going to die than that hour or so out there in the Gulf of Mexico, except maybe the time I went scuba diving.

You had six parachute malfunctions? Jesus Christ on a pony, that would make me walk everywhere.

Scariest or worst?

In 1976 I was riding my 10 speed in Boston at night. I remember a yellow cab turning from opposing traffic in front of me. I woke up three days later in Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, in ICU, remembering nothing after the hit. My right down handlebar went in my sack and came out a few inches below my navel. I was apparently delivered to the hospital with the cut off handle bar still in me. I lost my right nut, my gall bladder and a few feet of intestine. Mt. Auburn is a Catholic teaching hospital, I was told that when I got delivered by the paramedics they gave me the Last Rites. Six months later I was back at college. They told me I'd never have kids, I have two conceived naturally.

BTW, they never identified the Yellow Cab.

Driving a 68 911 up 101 from Goleta to the Rt 1 cut off to Lompoc in the driving rain while following 15 feet behind a 74 Ford Station Wagon at 75 mph. At 15 feet all you could see was the guys taillights. Anyways get to the off ramp to get on the Rt 1 I hit the brakes..and there are no brakes they were all wet...so I am pumping them furiously thinking what am I going to hit when I remember the off ramp keeps on going back down to the 101...WHEW...fortunately the brakes caught and I slide to a stop in the middle of the intersection. That last 20 into Lompoc I keep hitting the brakes to make sure they worked and I was driving a lot slower in the rain.

Another time in a 912 picked up a AF Lt in a yellow 914 in the Gaviota Pass and all the way down RT 1 to Lompoc we were running about 105 mph with him about 6 ft behind me ...

Or the time in the 912 I picked up a guy in a 69 White Mach 1 in N Hollywood, he would punch it and he'd be down the road in a flash where I slowly cranked it up 105 and caught him after he backed off...then he'd punch it again and down the road he would be and I would catch him again...we did that for 40 miles all the way up to Sea Cliff Dr N of Ventura where he got off.

Now if you know anything about that road you know the CHP loves to hide at the bottom of the hill as you come into Oxnard...that whole stretch of road to where it turns N to Ventura... ya better watch out and ya better not pout when the CHP gives you a ticket today.

I grew up in Endicott N.Y. near the Susquehanna river. There was a dam on the river called Rockbottom Dam. It was only a drop of about 8 - 10 foot but the swirl it created was like a washing machine. I was about 10 at the time and my dad and I were on the river in a 12 ' fiberglass boat with a 9.9 hp outboard on the transom. We had put in up the river a few miles and didn't realize how far we had drifted because we were fishing. All of a sudden my dad yells out " reverse " but I couldn't react fast enough and over we went. We made it over just fine but the swirl then turned us sideways so now the length of the boat is parallel to the rushing water. It's filling the boat and tipping quite violently and then it happened the boat flipped over ! My dad jumped clear but I didn't. To make things worse the outboard or the portable fuel tank ( not sure which ) hit me in the head and knocked me out. So I'm out cold swirling and tumbling in this wash with no way out. Next thing I know I'm on shore yacking up a bunch of water. My dad had somehow swam up to the turbulent water, swung his arms/hands in the swirl and found me, grabbed me and pulled me to shore. Yeah that was a close call. To make matters worse a few years later three firefighters lost their life in that same location, makes me realize how lucky I was.
Another time I was tooling along on a Yamaha RD400 going about 70 mph when out of the blue she throws the chain ! :eek: A million to one chance the chain gets caught around the swingarm and the spokes of the wheel.........instant brakes ! By pure luck I was able to keep her straight and upright. I still remember that smell of burning rubber I burned that tire down to the cord. I have had a few others but not as close as these two.