Wildest ride you've ever taken

This is out of left-field, but it is the dog days after all, and the subject came up in conversation last night.

What’s the wildest ride you’ve ever taken?

I have three – all from stories I did – in ascending order:

1) A news chopper where we were swooping wildly all over a lake looking for a breaking crime scene.

2) A stunt plane, one of those bi-plane propeller jobs. The pilot did loop-the-loops, hammerhead stalls, anything to try to get me to throw up.

3) An F-4 Phantom, the Vietnam-era fighter still being used by National Guard units in the 80s. We broke the sound barrier, but more strenuous was the dive-bombing and strafing runs on a desolate piece of Oklahoma. Lotta G’s pulled. Again, the pilot gleefully tried to induce vomiting (pre-flight, the two pilots bragged about how they had Marina Navratilova as a passenger a couple of weeks earlier and she had barfed).

The best thing about the F-4 ride is that it gives me credibility when I beg off riding roller coasters and other stomach-churning rides with my kid.

I’m sure there are better ones out there, especially from former/current military people. Or chronic commercial flyers who had memorable bad flights. (And, of course, jokes to be made.)

 

Molly Haiselmayer in October 1989. Truly unforgettable.

 

Whitewater rafting down the New River on a Class VI

 

Starbucks, meet screen. Well-played, JK.

Reality: flying from Edmonton to Calgary to pick up passengers as Mrs. Birdscribe and I returned from our honeymoon. 40 mph swirling winds plus inexperienced pilot equaled us swaying to and fro as we were coming in for what became a rather hard, pancake-esque landing.

Mrs. Birdscribe hates flying, so she was in fine form as this was taking place.

 

going 115 mph in a friend's parents' 1978 AMC Matador station wagon on I-384 in Connecticut.

This was when I was going to UConn. In 1996.

The big 401 V-8 was probably at idle speed going that fast.

 

Three years ago, driving a wheat truck. Farmer opted to take his wheat to a different elevator, so I had to go north to a different town instead of south to the usual town. Wheat truck was an old piece of crap (he got a different one this year), no radio, no a/c, no biggies ... but, the brakes were extremely suspect.
He said, "Be careful going down the hill," before I took off to the north with my first load. I thought he meant the hill on the asphalt highway right before the river bridge.
He meant the hill on the dirt road before the T-intersection before the asphalt highway.
Anyway, I crest this hill and start going down it. I step on the brakes, and they are frozen. Don't budge. I stand on the damned things, and they still don't move. I try downshifting, but the RPMs are too high and I can't shift down to a gear which would allow me to come to a stop. The hill grade tapers a bit near the highway, but by the time I reach that I'm cooking along fairly well and ... no shit ... the song "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" by Harry Chapin starts playing in my head.
God must have been on my side that evening because near the end the brakes started pumping and I shifted down to a manageable gear. But I was still going too fast to stop. No traffic was coming from either direction at the T-intersection, luckily, and when I got there I cranked the wheel as hard as I could to the right. Damn near had it on two wheels, and I lost some wheat when i made the turn, but I came out of it unscathed. Farmer still doesn't know it happened. If I had not slowed and made the corner, I am totally convinced I would be dead.





And, Molly Haiselmayer really wasn't that good.

 

A fucking cab ride from JazzFest to the Quarter in 2001.

Jesus H. Christ.

Other notables

A ride with a special forces chopper crew. That dude was BAD ASS. I hope I'm half the chopper jockey he was/is.

A C-130 ride from Montgomery to Aviano, Italy, with a stop in between at the Azores. (That's a whole 'nother story, though). 17 hours on a big, green, slow vibrator ain't too fun. *Fuck you, Uncle Sam*

 

Neither was your mom.

 

There was this neighbor woman...

 

Outing alert: Sxysprtswrtr is Mol ...
Shit. I can't do it. ;D

 

When I was a kid there was a portable amusement park ride called "The Turbo". Imagine a ferris wheel with each side of the wheel moving in an opposite direction while the whole thing rotated around below like carousel. And rider cabins were placed facing out. I kept my lunch though. Can't say the same when I rode the "Tilt-A-Whirl."

 

There was a ride called the Rotor where you would be going around in one big circle, trapped to the wall by the G force, and then the floor would drop out. One kid puked, but the vomit got whipped back in his face.

For a 10-year-old, I never laughed so hard in my life.