Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you've ever done?

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

Wow, unfortunately like others there are too many stupid things to count and some just down right ashamed to admit.

The most painful, stupidest thing, I ever did was in the 7th grade. It involved teenage buddies, bicycles, gravel, and physics. Some friends and I were having races down our gravel driveway. It was a gradual downhill about 250yds long with a sharp left turn at the bottom. I was on a friends 10 speed, in 10th gear pedaling as hard as I could when I realized I was out of road. I had made this turn before at really fast speeds, never this fast though, but I had no fear on a bicycle (at that time). By going straight I would drop about 6 feet off the road into a patch of briars, bushes, stumps and who all knows what else buried in there. I made the decision to hang on and take the curve.

In my split second decision making I left out an important factor – physics.

I turned the bike to take the curve and the back wheel quickly, instantaneously, lost traction and started to slide around. It all happened so fast and the bike just fell out from under me. I hit hands first and face second sliding about 15 feet. I made the turn but the bike went straight. The guy behind me – yes, I did win the race /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif – said it looked like the bike flipped out from under me and landed on the seat first.

Lost two front teeth, one hung in by the roots and our neighbors found the other one that night searching in the dark with the car headlights. Both teeth were wired in but eventually had to have a bridge put in. Took almost 100 stitches to sew up my forehead, nose and to reattach my lower lip back to the right side of my face. Lost a lot of blood and was being considered for a transfusion. Glad I did not get one as it was the late 70’s, when we knew very little about AIDs, how it was spread and no AIDs testing for blood supplies. Both hands, forearms, left shoulder and left knee were pure hamburger. My left knee has a big scar on it and the top inner half is still numb – no feeling at all.

Anyone remember the Timex slogan – takes a licking and keeps on ticking? I was wearing a windup Timex watch when this happened. The crystal was shattered and had about a ¼” hole in it. There was small rock wedged under one of the hands. After the wreck I thought it was busted but could not throw it in the trash so I just put it away. Years later I found that watch. I got the rock from under the hand it just started ticking away. Still have the watch and it still works.

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

Stupid college fun. A few frat brothers and I all decided to buy cars for less then $250 bucks each and then beat the **** out of them. I bought a Pontiac Catalina that had the longest largest hood I'd ever seen. The paint was a bit rough so I painted it with a Wagner power Painter. I named it the Slider.

On a trip back from a Steelers game I fell asleep with a car load of sleeping drunk buddies. We ALL woke up when we felt the car hit then proceed to slide along the guardrail at about 70mph. Pulled back onto the highway and we all proceeded to laugh our asses off that the car just 'slide' along the guardrail.

Since we survived it once, we proceeded to slap the guardrails the whole way home. It was pretty fun to be sliding along the rails a bit.

Can't believe we all didn't die, but to this day everyone remembers that car and the trip.

BTW, it would also hold 5 halves in the trunk. It was one big a** car.

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( How about you? Been crazy in the past safety wise?)</font>
Well, I thought about it and decided not to comment because I have to be the stupidest (is that a word?) guy on this board. I do not want to ruin my good reputation on TBN /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
However, the SCARIEST thing I ever did was get married...three times /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

Why is it that the magical word "motorcycle" keeps turning up in stories of our mis-spent youth?

I was 23, and a motorcycle racing legend in my own mind. (I raced hare scrambles and enduros, with an occasional MX weekend)I just got a new bike. (400 Husky) I was ripping up the grass on mom and dads yard. There was a group of young ladies in a neighbors back yard. (smell trouble already) I decided they needed to see me in full tilt action. I wanted to see just how fast I could get going before I ripped past them. To do so, I needed to cross the parents driveway. It was blacktop, just recently sealed, and slicker,n snot. When the back wheel hit the slick asphalt, it lost traction and i got high-sided. It was an UGLY crash. And when I looked up, all the girls were laughing at me.

My new bike had bent handle bars.

My left arm needed a cast.

My pride was never the same again.

I learned a lesson about showing off.

I married one of the girls that laughed at me.

Will the pain ever end?

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

Have to admit I have done the same thing - called threading the big needle

Thank goodness those TT drivers are professionals!!! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

A lot of my stupid tricks have been on 2 wheels too, but at least one involved my tractor.

I volunteered to pull a float in a local homecoming day parade. The float was to promote Pop Warner Football - so several players and some cheerleaders and adult coaches were going to ride on the float. Pretty soon more players wanted to ride so the float had to be bigger. No problem I just borrowed my friend's 3-axle 38 ft low boy trailer. The whole league would fit. Everybody got on and we went down the main street to a cheering crowd.

But then the route went up a hill to the school - and about halfway up the hill I looked down and noticed the sidewalls of my rear tires wrinkling under the combined load of tongue weight and towing force. I was in a low gear and making progress up the hill, but later I got thinking about what would happen if one of the tires failed. It would have meant no pull, no brakes, no stopping a heavy trailer loaded with mostly children from rolling back down the hill, and likely plowing a house off its foundation at the bottom.

Nothing like that happened, but it was way too close. Years later I still get the cold chills thinking about it. I don't pull floats of any size anymore. It is remarkable how different life can look on closer examination.

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

I'll never put in writing the dumbest things I've done as a juvenile. Looking back, how stupid I was never ceases to amaze me. Someone should have stopped me.

Now that I'm older and responsible for my own actions though, I can tell you that not too much has changed in the lack of brains department. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I find the dumest things I do in the safety department are things like not taking the time to think things out. For instance, last weekend we all went out to the property to clear brush. I didn't want to go alone because I was going to use a chainsaw and had visions of trees falling on me or bleeding to death. So the kids go off to play in the pines and I tell my wife to sit over by a nice tree in the clearing. I'll start with these small saplings to clear out to get to the larger trees. The first one is about 1.5 inches at the base and no more than 10' tall I think. So I steps up and saws it off in one whack. It turns around on saw bar and falls on me. I had already shut the saw off as soon as I saw it on the bar, so I grabbed the stump about two feet up and try as I might, I can't stop it from tipping straight towards my wife. Turns out it was more like 25' tall, not 10' and the very top branch lands in my wifes lap and takes the book out of her hand. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

I make sure she is O.K. Not a scratch on her. We discuss the main topic of this thread(dumbness) for a few minutes. I send her off to a different clearing about 100' feet away where she can still see me and hear me but I won't be dropping any more trees on her. I then go back to cutting, using notches and hinges to drop them where I want them no matter how small they are. I think about my friends at TBN and the safety thread and I wonder if I will make it to my next birthday. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

Like most of you, way too many times. But, one that almost did me in was taking the short cut after school behind the dam (BIG dam), Half way accross the ice started to crack around my boots, somehow I made it. Never forgot that, if it don't feel right anymore I don't do it, well most of the time!

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

Well, I grew up on a ranch in the Texas hill country and some things some things happened by my dumb choice and some just happened.. here are a few that come to mind... I suspect that some of the dumber ones have thankfully been forgotten.

Once I picked up a grown live skunk by the tail.... and discovered that if you do it right they CAN'T stink. Are you wondering how I got rid of the skunk after I picked him up??

The hills were so rough and with so many slick rocks that many times I would fall off on the "uphill side" as the horse fell down and I'd let him roll to a stop then remount and continue rounding up sheep, goats, cattle.

I was 10 or so when I cornered a game animal against a rock cliff face on uneven ground... it was above me... I shot and missed it with my 22 rifle but the ricochet past my head impressed me to never again shoot without considering the chance of a ricochet back at me.

We had a half-brama yellow brindle cow with wide, sharp horns, that was ornery under normal circumstances. Then she had twin calves. I had to get her in the pen for a reason now forgotten. She wouldn't drive and leave the newborn baby calves which were wobbeling in various directions, occasionally following her, occasionally following me because I moved and they thought I might be their momma. You need to know that a momma cow with new born calf can be more dangerous than a bull. The protective/nervous/unpredictable hormones are raging. She will charge and not stop to protect her new babies. Twins are more than double trouble because when one is following her, the other likely isn't. She wouldn't face away from me and go anywhere... if both the twins were right close to her, she would back up a little when I pressed her. If I got too close, she would charge. If a calf got too close to me, she would charge. If a calf wandered behind me... she turned into a banshee assuming that I was doing the worst to her calf. All I could do was hunt for that dynamic fine line where she was sufficiently calm to back up a few steps, wait until the baby calves' unpredictable motion would take them in her direction, not mine, then advance toward them just the right amount to get her to back up, yet not so much that she would charge. It took me over an hour to back her into the pen from the pasture... and I can tell you that my heart was racing all the time! There were numerous occasions when I had to pull the rodeo clown's trick of running close to the animal's head at a sharp angle to avoid her charges while dodging brush, rocks and prickley pear underfoot.

To get to the ranch, you had to cross a low water river crossing about 150 yards wide. Normally a inch or so of water ran over the gravel crossing. One night my uncle and I were returning from a stock show and it began to rain heavily. The kind of rain that floods everything. We saw the flood when we crossed the river 15 miles upstream from the ranch. Racing down the road in the dark, we left the pickup on the high river bank and dashed down to the river. It was muddy but the big flood was not yet there. Not wishing to ruin our good boots, we took them off and waded in carrying them. Quickly the water was up to our calves... at about 30 yards it was knee high and so swift that keeping footing was amazingly difficult. It truly surprised me. Focusing on each step, we proceeded on, him first, then me. It was impossible to stay on the gravel road.. each step pushed us down stream some. He went down first, then I did. While sweeping down stream, I churned my feet to seek to make continual progress toward the other side. Stopping was not possible. There was nothing to hold on to. It is incredible the force that rushing water has even though it is only knee to waist deep! My feet soon became numb from hitting the rocks in the river. There was no turning back... I kept on churning my feet, holding the boots while going downstream a lot and across it a little. Finally I made it to the opposite bank about 400 yards downstream, found my uncle about 50 yards from where I came out. We both realized that we had come close to drowning, put our boots on and walked the 1.5 miles to the house in the dark and rain. It was about 2 weeks before the flood was over, the river receeded and the crossing fixed so we could retrieve the pickup.

Ah, yes, those were the good 'ol days! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Re: Dumbest (most unsafe) thing you\'ve ever done?

Dumbest thing I've ever done is nearly turtle a 18K excavator. In fact it happened just the other day. I was pushing some dirt with the front dozer blade and came to a hill by our paved town road. The end of the land has a steep embankment down to the pavement. So, when I got to the end of the push, I swung the hoe around and proceeded to move "forward". Problem is when you swing the hoe around forward is now reverse! Obviously I know this, having spent many hours at the controls, but I just forgot for a split second. The machine instantly started to pitch down the hill and I threw the drive handles the other way (out of instinct). Well that made it much worse because the machine went right up into the air and nearly flipped over on its roof (me)! I jumped out of the seat and was in the doorway trying to hold it from flipping over with all my 175lbs. I slowly reached down and lowered the boom to counter-balance the machine and bring it back to earth. I'd have dropped close to six or eight feet onto the pavement below. I was very lucky. All I could think of was the picture in the newspapers of this huge machine laying in the road on it's top....would not have been pretty, especially with me mashed into the pavement. Of course I was alive in my visions of the newspaper the next day. It scares me thinking about it now. BTW: The seatbelt was covered in grease and was stuck between the seat and the sides of the machine. I pulled it free and cleaned it up for use after that little piece of handy work.

Lesson: Stop and think before you slap at the contols on an excavator. There's all kinds of things that can get damaged or crushed by the stick, tracks, or rear end.

This doesn't apply to everybody, but: I have two young kids that love to watch. I swing the machine around and check for kids or dogs before I blindly grab the sticks and take off in reverse. Just a good habit that only takes a second.