Three unique things...

I read some of this thread to my wife and she had a few of her own to add -

1. Pulled off a tour bus by East German border guards to witness their search of the contents of her suitcase. (true story, I watched, along with every other member of the band - she had no secrets from any of us after that :D )

2. Graduated high school in 3 1/2 years, followed by college in 3 1/2 years. Part of the college time was with a long cast on her leg.

3. Slept on a train platform in Hamburg, Germany in "shelters" made from suitcases.
 
Fascinating thread to read!

Aviation related:

1. Survived the crash of a Bell 47 helo at age 12 in 1975
2. Flew full time as a glider instructor in New Zealand for 2 months in 1996
3. Flew a low performance wood and fabric sailplane for 8 hours/250 miles on a pre-declared triangle course setting several state records in 2002
 
I love this thread, so I'll brag some more:

1. Made out with my girlfriend in the back of a vintage Rolls Royce limousine
2. Spent a week in Panajachel, Guatemala
3. Won an airplane in a sweepstakes
 
Man, youse guys make my life look boring.

How about: Soloed a taildragger with less than 2 hours logged?
 
This seems like a good thread to introduce myself. I just joined. I got interested in this board through Tim Metzinger. Just recently, I took a flight to Gettysburg with him where he and I met a few of you for lunch. It's a very nice way to get introduced.

My three unique things.

1) Ate chicken and drank vodka at a barbeque with Russians, in March, in 6 feet of snow, in Siberia Russia. Nothing stops those guys from having a barbecue (or drinking Vodka :) ).

2) Crossed into North Korea in Panmunjom as part of a tour of the DMZ.

3) Sat patiently in a B747 at the gate in Narita Japan for 5 hours while a typhoon passed overhead. The winds were too strong to pull the jetway upto the plane without doing damage. That was the bumpiest flight I never took.
 
This thread is a hit! Great Topic!

- When I was a kid living in Germany (Miliary Brat), I got stuck in a trashcan whilst playing hide and seek. It was a thick metal tall slender one. It was so bad, the fire department had to bring something similar to the jaws of life to cut the can open from around me to avoid breaking my legs when pulling me out. My parents were not too proud of that moment.....either.
 
Ghery said:
3. Slept on a train platform in Hamburg, Germany in "shelters" made from suitcases.
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She's gotta come up with a better one than that, that's not unusual at all.:p

I also camped out in the Frankfort Airport for almost 3 days since our flight was delayed 2 hrs at a time.
 
OK, ok...

3c) While coaching basketball (and scrimmaging), a freshman player drove the lane. I was playing defense, turned, and he jumped up into my chin, and I bit my tongue in half.

It hurt. Alot.
 
wby0nder said:
Fascinating thread to read!

Aviation related:

1. Survived the crash of a Bell 47 helo at age 12 in 1975
2. Flew full time as a glider instructor in New Zealand for 2 months in 1996
3. Flew a low performance wood and fabric sailplane for 8 hours/250 miles on a pre-declared triangle course setting several state records in 2002
Click to expand...

ho hum, i wanna know your non-aviation list.
 
dmccormack said:
OK, ok...

3c) While coaching basketball (and scrimmaging), a freshman player drove the lane. I was playing defense, turned, and he jumped up into my chin, and I bit my tongue in half.

It hurt. Alot.
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OUCH! I bit my tongue a LOT, but never in half.

I was going up to block a shot in scrimmage once and hit my hand sideways on the bottom of the rim. Heard something pop. Came down and my hand felt funny. Coach said to run cold water over it. :eek: After a full week of scrimmaging with a painful shooting hand, I FINALLY went to get x-rays. The bone inside my hand had completely broken in two, but was already fused together on top of each other. :hairraise: They said they could do surgery to correct it, but we were 2 weeks away from opening game. :no: Now the ring finger on my right hand is a little shorter and I have a small bump on the back of my hand when I make a fist.

I actually got more banged up in basketball than in football. At least in football you get to wear pads!
 
when i was about 8, at my birthday party at the bowling alley i came running up to the lanes, forgot about that 1.5 foot drop off, and my chin landed squarely on the back of a chair. bit my tongue really good, but only drew blood.
 
dmccormack said:
OK, ok...

3c) While coaching basketball (and scrimmaging), a freshman player drove the lane. I was playing defense, turned, and he jumped up into my chin, and I bit my tongue in half.

It hurt. Alot.
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Welll...if we are going to start the "Unique sports injuries" discussion, we need a whole new thread. :)
 
dmccormack said:
Absolutely -- broken jaw, tongue bit in half, fractures, countless sprains and eye gouges -- Basketball was definitely the hardest sport on my body!
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You mean there are those more strange than falling sixty feet down the East Face of Arapahoe Basin (45 degree slope), messing up your right knee and left hip? Oh, and it's followed by surgery on the knee and as far as the left hip, four doctors in a row say there's nothing wrong we can see. "I can't tell you what's causing that pain." There's nothing phantom about it... the leg and pain were both there. Eventually, a another doc made me glow and found stress fractures. I had finally felt vindicated.
 
1. Got to sit in the Apollo 13 capsule (well) before it was launched, thanks to an Uncle who worked for NASA and a security guard who didn't think a two-year-old would tell the communists anything. Don't blame that electrical glitch on me!
2. Killed a mugger by hand in self-defense, and didn't even get charged (though I was detained while my story was confirmed by the surviving assailant).
3. Appeared in several episodes of "Spenser: For Hire" as an extra while living in Boston.
 
dmccormack said:
OK, ok...

3c) While coaching basketball (and scrimmaging), a freshman player drove the lane. I was playing defense, turned, and he jumped up into my chin, and I bit my tongue in half.

It hurt. Alot.
Click to expand...

I knew not a thing about football until I got to high school (raised by my mom), so needless to say, I didn't try out to play.

My (Honors. Heh) classmates organized our own weekend after school football games sophmore year.

I played center. I got an interception. Ball was right there so why not try to catch it? :)

One of my buddies wrote congrats on a class chalkboard. My oner and only time/success as a jock.
 
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OtisAir said:
This thread is a hit! Great Topic!

- When I was a kid living in Germany (Miliary Brat), I got stuck in a trashcan whilst playing hide and seek. It was a thick metal tall slender one. It was so bad, the fire department had to bring something similar to the jaws of life to cut the can open from around me to avoid breaking my legs when pulling me out. My parents were not too proud of that moment.....either.
Click to expand...
My brother did that with our giant mailbox that had been knocked down by a passing motorist. This was back in the days of the CB, and it must have gone out on the radio, so we had all sorts of 18-wheelers driving slowly by the house to look at the kid stuck in the mailbox! :)
 
1. Got to sit near/meet Dolly Parton while flying non-rev from DFW to BNA.
2. Was a Nuclear Operator, USS Enterprise CVN-65, for four years.
3. My primary and instrument (in progress) instructor is Bob Oehl, Jimmy Doolittle's nephew. My grandfather instructed Werner Von Braun for his US pilot's certificate.
 
gprellwitz said:
My brother did that with our giant mailbox that had been knocked down by a passing motorist. This was back in the days of the CB, and it must have gone out on the radio, so we had all sorts of 18-wheelers driving slowly by the house to look at the kid stuck in the mailbox! :)
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My cousin hid in a junk fridge that was set out in the carport at my aunt's house. It was one of those that has the "lift the lever" to open the door... so she was locked inside. She passed out from lack of oxygen and the fact that we couldn't find her--too much time had passed. We finally went and got Auntie... let's just say that the fire/rescue presence that followed impressed my 5-year-old mind, and she DID survive. Scary though.
 
TMetzinger said:
1. Got to sit in the Apollo 13 capsule (well) before it was launched, thanks to an Uncle who worked for NASA and a security guard who didn't think a two-year-old would tell the communists anything. Don't blame that electrical glitch on me!
2. Killed a mugger by hand in self-defense, and didn't even get charged (though I was detained while my story was confirmed by the surviving assailant).
3. Appeared in several episodes of "Spenser: For Hire" as an extra while living in Boston.
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Holy ****! :hairraise:

Note to self: Do NOT **** off Tim! :fcross:

Are you really going to leave us hanging with that story?
 
TangoWhiskey said:
My cousin hid in a junk fridge that was set out in the carport at my aunt's house. It was one of those that has the "lift the lever" to open the door... so she was locked inside. She passed out from lack of oxygen and the fact that we couldn't find her--too much time had passed. We finally went and got Auntie... let's just say that the fire/rescue presence that followed impressed my 5-year-old mind, and she DID survive. Scary though.
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My God. Does she talk about it? Talk about feeling like you are buried alive. Does she have claustrophobia now? Why was she hiding?
 
Henning said:
She's gotta come up with a better one than that, that's not unusual at all.:p

I also camped out in the Frankfort Airport for almost 3 days since our flight was delayed 2 hrs at a time.
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I slept overnight in Frankfurt airport, because the only train leaving my friend's tiny little town in northern Germany heading south was 24 hours before the flight. I look back NOW and think "why the hell didn't I just get a hotel room" and I imagine it was because I was

1. 20 and
2. broke.

probably 1 more than 2, because why would you spend money on a perfectly good hotel room when your flight is leaving THE NEXT MORNING??
 
woodstock said:
My God. Does she talk about it? Talk about feeling like you are buried alive. Does she have claustrophobia now? Why was she hiding?
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Back in the day, before phones had dials, we played a game called "Hide and Seek." :D
 
mikea said:
Back in the day, before phones had dials, we played a game called "Hide and Seek." :D
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Hey, I thought this was more of a present day story because I read Troy's post too quickly. I was a little confused as to why an adult would hide in a fridge, but hey, you never know what goes on in families.
 
1) Stuck my head out the hatch on the top of the Empire State Building
2) Was up on the roof of the North tower of the WTC
3) Flew a private plane out of Milan up over Lake Como, lunch in Switzerland, then back to Milan
4) Met Churchill's granddaughter
....
 
Stevel said:
You must be a yungin' There once was a time when dials on phones were the new thing.
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I was going for comedy through exaggeration. Sheesh.

Phones did indeed have dials in my day. We didn't get "Touch-tone" until my teens, when Mom made the mistake of letting me order the phone service for her. It used to cost extra, too. Not for us since Mom worked for the phone company. We always had several phone "extensions," too - a real luxury in those days. She wouldn't let me put one in the bathroom.

I have a wooden crank wall phone that I got mere years after it was pulled out of service in some northern Wisconsin farm, so phones with no dials were in use well into the 1980s.
 
mikea said:
I have a wooden crank wall phone that I got mere years after it was pulled out of service in some northern Wisconsin farm, so phones with no dials were in use well into the 1980s.
Click to expand...

My grandparents house in New Orleans had TWO of those...one upstairs, and one downstairs in the kitchen. When I went to visit back when I was younger, the phones had just recently been decommissioned (mid to late 1980's), but they still worked as an intercom between each other. They worked, though very weak, until the last time I was in that house in Aug of '05.
 
Our first phone number.....


Sherwood-51780
Then, (SH)-51780
Later, 745-1780

To dial another phone on the Sherwood exchange, just dial the last 4 digits.
 
I remember standing up on the milk box at the drug store, to use the old crank up phone. I would tell Mildred(the operator) that I wanted to talk to my mother. She connected us. This was after we had been to the Sat. matinee.Watched Roy and Gene. Bob
 
Henning said:
Went through 6 hurricanes at sea
Sailed a schooner around Cape Horn
Ran Fuel Altered
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What we really need to do, is figure out how many unique things Henning has done that none of the rest of us have! It's probably in the hundreds...

I'm surprised he didn't mention being in a porn movie. :rofl:
 
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