Slow clap.......

This but a Scott

A Leatherman multi-tool might have saved my life once about 30 years ago.

(Back in my "Wilderness Adventure" days).

Cowardice and luck.

varian

Three years ago, this truck saved my life..........



What was left of it........

My dog.

I was one of the lucky kids in the 80s that got to experience a full blown serum sickness-like reaction to Ceclore.  They had to nearly overdose me on Decadron.

Antibiotics. Several times.

Armor plate absorbed shrapnel impact to my upper back.

Due to my height my mid and low back weren't so lucky. The upper impact area would've killed me, but I just live in constant pain instead.

Airbags, twice.

Horses, wool pants, and down parkas.

Seat Belt x 2
Motorcycle Helmet x 2
A friend in the Army while repelling down a cliff
PRC 77 Radio that took most of a load of Buck Shot
My Fists and will to kill if needed while fighting 28 inmates for control of a gate

My Pioneer Super 22 reserve chute when I got rid of my main chute.

Donated blood.

Quick action of a friend.  Saved me 35ish years ago from choking to death.

Grace!

Instrument training in my plane.
A friend.
Experience.
A cool head.

Seat belts

Air bags

Reinforced side rails.

Amoxicillin.

saved my life - Nafcillin

On 19April 1985, around 8 pm, I drove my Kawasaki motorcycle into a stopped car at 60 miles per hour.

The car, a typical behemoth of the day, was stopped in the second lane from the right on the outer loop of the DC Beltway, just over the crest of the bridge that takes the Beltway over Telegraph Road.

The car had dark brown paint, displayed no lights of any kind, and there were no flares warning of its presence. Sunset that day was about an hour earlier.

As a result, this wall of metal magically appeared before me and in an instant I drove straight into it.

The State Police accident investigator told me I had less than one second between being able to see the car and hitting the car, but that I still managed to lock the brakes up on my bike. Doing so caused the bike go nose down, and to act sort of like a catapult arm throwing me over the car as the bike came to a sudden stop. It was one of many factors that saved my life that night.

During the microseconds of the impact several things happened. First, my left hand was driven forward, breaking the ligaments holding the bones in my thumb together (called a "gamekeeper's thumb"). As my left hand went forward from there, it went though the windscreen, slicing my palm open. My right hand, grasping the throttle, rotated as I came up on the start of my arc over the car, breaking both the brake lever and a bone in my hand.

I went through the still shattering windscreen and over the top of the car, in a beautifully graceful cartwheel. As I cartwheeled, I clipped the roof with my right arm, retearing the rotator cuff (I tore it two years before, in another motorcycle accident). Somewhere in flight, I rolled into a ball and when I finally hit the ground some 50+ feet in front of the car, I rolled and then slid.

I was saved from being run over by two men in separate cars a few hundred yards behind me, one in the rightmost lane and the other in the lane to the left of me. They saw what happened, stopped and blocked the Beltway with their cars, and in so doing, kept me from getting run over.

I recall lying in the roadway, then slowly sitting up and saying to myself "What the fuck is that car doing there?"

About that time, my brain took over and said "You need to lay back down. Gently." As I had finished EMT-B training just two weeks earlier, and stopped at a horrific car accident on Easter Sunday, twelve days before, an accident in which a family of five was all but wiped out, I knew chances were I was pretty badly injured. Besides, at that instant I didn't have it in me to do much else.

So, I lay back down and waited for the EMS response. When the medic unit from Station Five in Alexandria, VA arrived, the senior paramedic was a guy who'd proctored the EMT-B certification I did two weeks earlier. Their assessment as I lay there found my blood pressure and pulse were elevated (200+/100+, pulse 150+), and a bleeding laceration on my left palm. That was it. No broken bones, no obvious head or spine injury, no brains splattered all over everywhere (for obvious reasons).

They packaged me up and sent me off to the ER at Mount Vernon Hospital, a place I later worked as an ER technician. The team there confirmed I wasn't broken into big pieces and, with a dressing on my palm (at the direction of a reconstructive surgeon who happened to be there, there were no sutures, despite the size of the injury). I walked out of the hospital about midnight. It wasn’t until the following week we discovered the broken ligaments and bones, and it wasn't until 1999 when I discovered how badly I damaged my spine.

In my EMT-P class I learned the survival rate for that type of accident is around 1:100,000 (just to survive), to escape almost uninjured is over 1:1,000,000.

The damage to my Kawasaki was impressive. I broke everything from the front of the bike to the rear tail light. Engine cracked, front wheel and forks, frame, rear wheel, the works.


As bad as my injuries were, I was actually lucky I was on my motorcycle. That fact allowed me to be thrown from the accident, depriving all the kinetic energy that totally my Kawasaki from totaling me. I have no doubt that had I been in my Volvo wagon I would have died, if not instantly, then shortly thereafter, as the engine and grill would have stopped somewhere near the back seat.

The two good outcomes of the whole affair was my becoming involved with the woman who later became my spouse, and who gave me my beloved daughter.

It took seven years before I was able to get on a motorcycle again, but I did, and I ride today.

If there are lessons to be learned from my experience they are (1) ALL THE GEAR, ALL THE TIME, and (2) be prepared for anything to happen.

My full face Arai helmet saved my (it was cracked and scrapped from the impact and slide on the roadway). My jacket, just a military field jacket, kept my skin from being abraded away. My trousers, which were torn from the ankle to the hip, saved the skin on my legs. I wasn't wearing gloves, but other than the laceration of my palm, I doubt they'd have made a difference.

So, fellow enthusiasts, ATGATT, be prepared for the most outlandish shit to happen, and generally try to be safe. As for the rest of the motoring word, watch out for motorcycles.

A piece of 5/8" nylon rope attached to the boat I fell off of 20 miles offshore at 2:00am while my crew slept, which wrapped around my ankle and allowed me to pull myself to safety against a strong current.

Not to hijack the thread, but I think the only condition upon which I would ride a bike is if I were the "Last man on earth" with no other automobile present anywhere.

List is too long.
Every piece of PPE used for
jumping out of planes and off fixed objects.
working and personal fun of exposed rope work hundreds of feet off the deck
Working confined and flooded spaces some 100ft+ under ground and open water.
Wrecking automobiles at work and personal time
45+mph on a bicycles
Motorcycles of all sort going sideways.
Many class 5 swims
So cold and so hot it will kill ya unprepared.
Neurosurgeons and funny gas Dr's
Drugs, a multitude of types.

Thousands of items all firing 100% to achieving my humble breathing today.  

No joke...I was rear ended while stopped and yielding for a left turn in a compact car when another small car doing about 30 MPH didn't even hit the brakes.  My head was rattled more than I expected for that speed.  I've only ever driven full size sedans or SUV's since.

This, and living three blocks from the ER.  Had asthma as a teen.  Woke up in the middle of the night one time with the worst attack I could ever imagine.  Could barely breathe.  Could not even yell out to my parents, their bedroom was right next to mine.  I sat up and pounded on the wall, mom came running in and off to the ER we went.  I could not even breathe in enough for the meds, so they gave me some steroid shot.  I remember fainting within seconds of the shot (only time in my life I have ever passed out).  First thing that happend was I lost my hearing.  I remember sitting on the table, and all of the sudden it was like someone turned to volume of life off.  I don't remember it, but was told I said, "I can't hear anything!" and then boom, out.  Came through with the mask on.  Terrible feeling.

Neat.

WHAT THE FUCK IS IT???

Parkland Hospital Dallas, Tx - fighting shock and bleeding out after being turned away from a hospital 1/2 mile away.

Fuck you Presbyterian.

Bug repellent device.  As someone who is apparently considered a delicacy by the local mosquito population, I'm definitely going to check it out.

2 pages in and im still in before Glock 19!!!!



















Seriously though... Car brakes and ABS technology.

Amen

26 foot Navy Conical reserve parachute

Duct tape

A Smith 5906, an army tourniquet and a heart stent.

Bike helmet. I would be dead, or brain damaged, 3 times over without one. I used to keep the broken ones on the garage wall as a reminder.

Training, preparation and fitness (not so much fitness anymore), I have always worked hard to anticipate and keep small problems from spinning out of control.  3 incidents diving the Andrea Doria could've turned out badly, and countless minor episodes with scuba students were headed off by early recognition and intervention.

It's a shotgun. #6 shot is best for the mosquitoes around here. I typically launch an assault while they argue over whether to eat me here, or take me back to the nest.

The other engine(s), fire extinguishers, spare hydraulic systems, in a plane a several times. Chaff and flares probably. Backup parachute once. Not making an airline flight once as a teenager. Wearing kangaroo leather and armor once at the race track on a sport bike. Drown once as a 2 yr old, and my Dad's Dr. friend brought me back to life. All I can think of right now

Born once..die twice....Born twice die once.

10 year old me: "Durr... hey, I think I'll paddle out to the far side of the lake (by myself) on a really windy day..."



Rain gear...

Story?

M16A2  and TOW missiles.

Seat belt. Walked away from this 20yrs ago.

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Driver's side rear tire separation at 60mph on the freeway.

Put me into 4 wheel drift, then air born landing on passenger side windshield pillar. No one else involved.

luck....

basically just luck. I did stupid things when I was younger, messing with the wrong women, the only thing that saved me from having a unwanted kid, or serious problems in the military was just pure luck.   I could have easily had a unwanted kid, a court marshal, and a prison sentence..... all over different women, who I should not have been messing with for various reasons.

Story?

Story?