Wildest ride you've ever taken

;D

 

This one time...at band camp.

Hey...the bitch told me to.

 

Back of a bike with a buddy of mine nicknamed, and I am not making this up, "Stay-Lo."

Last time I glanced over his shoulder we were going 110.

 

Actually she truly was. I wasn't kidding about that part. But I don't doubt that you'd know, too. Her list was long and distinguished ... kind of like my johnson.

 

• did shrooms with a good friend one day and before we peaked we had to drive from huntington beach to long beach. so we get to a drag from seal beach to long beach, and the doors' "light my fire" starts on the radio, and then the shrooms start to kick in, and i start driving 75, 80, 85, 90 down the drag, and my friend and i are singing with morrison, and a car cruises up beside us and wants to race. and i'm always up for a good car race. my retired LAPD sheriff's car (a chevy impala) left that little bitch eating my dust, and morrison kept singing, and i kept driving, and my friend kept laughing, and for a few minutes until the song ended and we reached a red light, finally, i felt like i'd taken the most beautiful rocketship ride to the moon.

• one night my two roommates and i (all three of us redheads) decide to go giefing (shooting people with fire extinguishers). i'd drive my retired LAPD car through the tiny streets of belmont shore, and they'd gief unsuspecting saps. we're along 2nd street and they shoot someone in their truck, and here we go. said truck starts chasing us. i try to lose them in the narrow streets of belmont shore, and it gets hairy on some of the pencil-thin neighborhood streets. we're all laughing, mind you. finally i pull onto ocean avenue and start haulin' gas. hit a red light, 65 to zero in seconds. the truck chasing me screeches to a halt behind me and, and a few guys inside chuk their beer cans at the back of my car. one guy gets out and approaches, so i hit the gas and run the red light, find a street (it's good to know your surroundings) and finally make 2 or 3 or 5 turns to break free of them for good. great times.

• space mountain at disneyland.

• the night in NYC, when 42nd street was still 42nd street, when i was 16 and trying to score a fake ID. i was taken on a ride by some hoods that should've led to my death. the story is really involved and maybe i'll tell it another time. but my best friend said he almost started crying as he thought about going to the cops and then having to tell my parents that i'd been killed.

• sweet helicopter ride in montego bay, jamaica.

• drive from vegas back to santa maria one day through the high desert.

• one night on the way back from a lakers game at the forum, i'm driving and the girl who liked me is singing, then we look to our right and a hearse pulls up and the guy turns his head left and shoots us this crazye-eyed stare, and he's a scary looking mofo who looks like Slash -- long, black curly hair and tophat and all -- then speeds ahead of us, and jackie and i start bustin' up laughing for miles, through hawthorne and el segundo and eventually into long beach.

 

The Wild Mouse and the Comet at Crystal Beach amusement park in Crystal Beach, Ontario.

I-95 between Fredrickersburg and the I-64 exit at 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon after smoking some rather potent whacky weed headed back to college. Driving 55 in the right-hand lane, felt like 100 MHP and my friend was passed out.

An Alleghany Airlines flight that was diverted from National to BWI on a stormy Thanksgiving weekend Sunday in 1974, the same day another Alleghany flight attempting to land at National crashed into a mountain west of DC. About half the flight lost their lunch, it was so bouncy.

 

A lass named Laura, for two years, who was fun, enthusiastic and beautiful.

Then she broke my heart.

Eh, I moved on.

 

Space Mountain is up there, but the trip home from Space Mountain was the winner.

Spring baseball swing into Florida with college team. Two senior players took the wheel of the van for the drive home. Each had several bottles of tequila. They drove 95 to 100 mph through the rest of Florida and Georgia, passing cars on the right-hand shoulder.

I was in the back seat, writing my obituary. The shortstop looks over his seat, sees what I'm doing, and says, "We all gotta die sometime, man."

Get to a McDonald's in South Carolina, I'm looking in the parking lot for cars with Pennsylvania license plates to beg a ride home. Found none.

The two idiots finally hit the wall (not literally) about 40 miles later, and I took the wheel. Never took my hands off it from there until we parked in south-central Pennsylvania.

 

March 20, 1998, 0548 GMT, Barents Sea: My submarine, the USS Grayling, collided with a Russian ballistic missle boat. That was a bad day.

Edit: And, post No. 2,000. What a ride.

 

The Texas Giant roller coaster at Six Flags over Texas.
The wooden behemouth shook the shit out of me.

 

I did a media day ride-along with one of those guys on the circuit that races along like logging roads in the woods. It was essentially one big drift, and I nearly shat myself. I'd never get in one of those things again.