Death by Rake

I was probably 17 and needed to do an oil change on my car. I got everything ready in the garage to get it done, turned on the radio, and got to it. I briefly thought about waiting until someone was home, just in case something happened, but I realized that I had done this many times before and nothing out of the ordinary would happen.

I jacked the front of the car up, slipped the jack stands underneath the sides, and slid underneath. About half way through the job, as I was just about to replace the oil filter, I hear a strange groaning noise. I was laying on my back and it sounded like it was coming from behind me so I couldn't really locate the source. I also had a filter 3/4 full of oil and didn't feel like spilling it all over myself if I tried to spin and find out what was going on. As I'm screwing the oil filter back on, I hear the groaning sound again, except it's quickly followed by an ominous pop...pop...POP. The third pop was one side of the jack stand plate sheering off, sending the passenger side of the car crashing to the ground. It happened so fast I could barely react.

I got lucky in four ways. The first was that when I turned my head to look for the popping sound, my arm ended up moving off of the filter and lined up with a more open spot of the engine bay. My fist still slammed against some engine component higher up, but my arm bones weren't shattered like they could've been. The second was that I was that I found the tip of my nose about an inch or so away from the bottom of the oil pan. If the suspension was any softer, my face would've been crushed. The third was that I had decided not to use the crawler because it was behind a bunch of plywood that I didn't want to move. If I had used it...well, see lucky thing #2. The third was that the jack stand kicked out, not in, when it failed. Had it come back in, it probably would've shot into the side of my head.

I was able to slide sideways enough to get out from under the car. I grabbed another jack stand, hoping that the same thing wouldn't happen twice, and finished the job. Scared the shit out of me, though.

 

(Sorry for typing mistakes, I'm doing this on my phone.)

I spend A LOT of time in my car. Easily 2-3 hours a day minimum (fuck commutes). I probably average around 3 hours a day. I've been doing this for a few years now. As a result, I've seen a lot of fucked up shit on the road.

Car fall off an overpass and land upside down? Check.

Suv spin up in the air, take out a light pole halfway up, land about 20 yards from me and there's blood on the windshield? Check. The light pole had fallen over and when I was running to help the guy another car hit it at speed, it spun around and almost took me out.

And yet I've never been in an accident. And I must have a damn good guardian angel because I've almost personally died while avoiding accidents probably a dozen times.

First one that comes to mind actually occurred a few miles away from where I currently am sitting in my car eating lunch. Long story short:

Two way street, 45 mph. My vs. much larger suv heading my direction. Middle-aged lady had her cell phone up what looked like texting. Neither of us was dropping speed, and maybe 20 yards in front of me she swerves directly into my lane. I didn't even have time to honk, swerved into the lane she was previously occupying, got my car under control after I ran up onto a curb.

I drove the last mile home going about 30 mph.

 

I've told this story a bunch of times on here, but I can't find any examples so I'll repeat it. As a kid, I was an idiot. Even more so than now. I once roller skated down a hill backwards. I was my myself, the road was almost entirely gravely pebbles, and less than 100 yards from the end of the hill was a straight drop at least 50 feet down, where I would have fallen into 3 inches of water and a concrete floor. One wheel of one skate went over the drop.

 

I was driving in the rain, a little too fast. There is a hill near where I live, a pretty steep straight uphill that goes on for a solid quarter mile. Right as the hill reaches its apex, it turns into a steep downhill S-curve that lasts for maybe 500 feet before tapering out. I love driving this area because I can accelerate up the hill to stupidly fast speeds, and then use the gravity of the hill combined with breaks and down-shifting to easily cut my speed. I can hit 80+ mph and, given the steepness of the hill, easily drop down to 40mph within 50 ft, to take the S-curve at manageable speeds.

It was raining pretty hard and I was driving along this road, driving up this hill at about 50 mph. I approached the curve and downshifted from 4th to 3rd gear—however, the car I was driving had a finicky stick-shift and it would occasionally pop into neutral when downshifting from 4th to 3rd. Right as I hit the first turn, I downshifted but the car dropped into neutral. For anyone that doesn't drive a stick-shift, the traction of a car is partly determined the RPM of the motor. i.e. driving in 3rd gear at 4000 RPM will give you better traction than driving at the same speed in 4th gear at 2000 RPM. Being in neutral drops the engine down to whatever the resting speed of the engine is and gives the car the least possible traction.

So, instead of dropping my speed to maybe 25 mph and taking the turn in a low gear with good traction, I hit the turn at 50 mph in neutral. I started hydroplaning as soon as I hit the turn. I struggled to regain control of the car as I headed toward the S-curve, my car fishtailing a solid 45° in each direction as I slid across both lanes. It was pretty stupid driving that got me into this situation, but from the moment I started hydroplaning my driving was masterful. I hydroplaned down 500 feet of road, navigating the car around two fairly sharp turns (sharp in the sense that you couldn't drive straight through them using both lanes).

Right as the road straightened out and flattened out, the car slid right onto a deep embankment. The mud cut my speed pretty quick but I headed toward two telephone poles (set alongside each other) at about 35 mph. I cut the wheel sharply to the left, missed the telephone poles by less than three feet (I checked the distance the next day, my wheels left treads in the grass marking the path of the car), and the car power-slided to a rest across the two lanes.

I changed the flat tire caused by the grass and thought I would walk away from it, the car made it about 100 feet further, leaving a trail of engine parts, before seizing up.

This is a good story because there's a lot of action, but I've probably had 10 to 20 other near-death experiences that I can think of. (Most of them were avoidable and the result of my own recklessness as a kid.) This will sound strange to say, but at this point I'm a bit desensitized to them. I'm sure a prolonged terminal illness would scare the shit out of me, but at this point I can pull myself out of a hairy situation, think "damn, that almost killed me," and go about my day without giving it a second thought. About a year ago I went into the ER after going into anaphylactic shock (layman's term: having a moderately-developing, life-threatening allergic reaction). I sat on an ER bed noticing all the classic signs of anaphylaxis that I was exhibiting (restlessness, feeling faint, hives, tunnel vision, throat closing, numb lips, etc.) while a nurse fussed around with my IV. Finally I turned to her and said, "I know I'm staying pretty calm given the situation, but you have less than a minute to administer those drugs before I pass out." That got her moving and everything went fine.

 

Reading Mr. Coolahans story reminded me of a time I was in the passenger seat in the rain. We were on the highway going probably 70 mph, and it was raining a decent amount. The car I was riding in was a 1980-something Chevy Celebrity Wagon...a driving death trap. Anywho, we were in the very left lane during this storm, and there were 4 of us in the car. We're just tooling along our merry way, when we start to hydroplane and the front end decides to slide to the right. Our car get's turned 90 degrees to the right but we're still moving in the original direction of the road. I look out my window for a split second to see a black Cadillac Escalade a good 15 ft away driving straight towards us. We're probably traveling around 65 mph in the correct direction, sliding across 3 lanes of traffic, all while turned 90 degrees perpendicular to the lanes. Luckily one of the back tires catches a good spot on the road, and spins us a little back in our original direction and off the side of the road safely into some construction barrels but spins us 180 degrees around so that my door is taking the full impact of the barrels. We finally come to a stop after ramming about 8 of these barrels. Fun times. I distinctly remember that Escalade and exactly what it looked like driving 65 mph straight at me...good thing the woman decided to slow down.

 

One of my more entertaining near death experiences: Two summers ago I got home around 3-4 in the morning, stumbled into bed rocking a wonderful buzz and passed the fuck out. I'm staying in my family's building and had the top floor to myself. I wake up around 6 needing to take a wicked piss but decide that fuck it, I'll get up later hoping I don't piss myself. Later on, around 10-ish, I hear banging so I run out to see what is going on only to find a plumber, an electrician and my uncle standing in the corridor between the room and the bathroom. They all look at me with some serious 'holy shit' faces. I ask what the fuck they're doing and they give me this answer:

The water heater broke, there's water on every inch of the bathroom and behind every wall. The water was live with electricity and we just shut it off. Had you have walked into the bathroom, you'd be dead. Had you have just turned the lights on, you'd be dead. If by some miracle you made it to the toilet and managed to piss, your stream would have probably electrocuted you. Touching the faucet to wash your hands? Same deal. Hell you might have died if you just looked at your bathroom.

Fuck. Yeah.

Apparently my uncle had come over to check on the air conditioners up there and spotted the water leaking from the water heater.

 

I was working at an orphanage in by Los Algadones Mexico, and had just finished cooking breakfast for all the volunteers and the staff. While in the kitchen I kept smelling gas coming from somewhere and I knew there was a leak but could not find it. I was assured by the guy running the orphanage it was normal and because the pilot light had to have gas to run on.

After breakfast I cleaned up the kitchen and headed through the dining hall towards the front door and all of the sudden KABOOM, I just about got knocked on my face as a huge explosion blew out the kitchen window lifted a huge cast iron oven/stove a few inches off the ground and made a nice fireball. I managed to compose myself after a few seconds and walked out the front door to a gathering crowd of orphans and workers and simply say "What"

Turns out the gas leak they were not worried about was a little bigger than anticipated and had I stayed in the kitchen for about 5 more seconds I probably would have had a nice stay in a Mexican hospital.

 

I was on the way back from a Falcons game in 2004, it's a two hour drive from Montgomery to Atlanta and vice versa. I was two friends, whom I'll call M and JW. After two hours of tailgating and three hours of live football, to say we were drunk was putting it nicely. During a period of I-85 construction outside of Atlanta, traffic slowed down enough so that M could open the passenger door of my convertible so that JW could puke out of it.

To combat the problems that occur while hammered and driving, we did the only sensible that that occurs to guys in their mid 20's, we opened up our bag of blow and started snorting. M would hold the straw for me and I'd lean over and take a bump to the nostril. Twenty miles and two grams of coke later, all is well. Only me and M were partaking, JW was passed out in the backseat.

Twenty miles later we drive into what can only be described as a torrential downpour, visibility was about forty feet at the max. Needless to say everyone is slowing down to thirty on I-85, most with their hazard lights on, some pulled over onto the shoulder waiting for it to pass.

We are at the top of hill on the way down, I figure with gravity and momentum I'm doing about 45 when M exclaims:

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck what is that!!!!!"

He then starts pointing at the bottom of the hill which we are about 5 seconds from. I look at the bottom of the hill and see what to this day makes me cringe knowing that one inch wrong and I'd probably still be in PMITA prison.

At the bottom of the hill is a bridge, a bridge with no shoulder room. On the left lane of the bridge, the lane we were currently on, is a cop car with his lights flashing, parked. Let me repeat that, at the bottom of the hill in a torrential downpour on a bridge on I FUCKING 85 is a PARKED COP CAR.

There was no way in hell I could stop, if I tried, I'd skid right into the ass of a cop car, drunk, under the influence of coke, with a car full of weed, booze, and more blow. So I did what probably saved our lives and assholes, I sped up. I sped up enough to get in front of the next car, cut right as fast as I could, fishtailing into the right lane, barely missing the cop car with my rear bumper, getting ahead of the car in the right lane, fishtailing back into the left lane and then I tried for the next ten miles to swallow my heart, which was currently residing in my throat. Miraculously the cop didn't follow us and we made it home without incident. Easily the most scared I remember being in the past decade.

 

A friend of mine's mom is selling this video to one of those wild most amazing video shows or something: She was driving along through the mountains in Northern California while her friend is in the passenger seat video taping all the scenery. Five minutes into the video the car is coming around the corner when an 18 wheeler is kind of sliding across the road of an over pass. The thing kind of flips over the side as they're driving under it. They started screaming and sped up to avoid the thing falling on top of them. Like ten seconds later you can hear the crash and the camera whips over to see the thing flipped upside down. It was obviously scary and a close call. But seeing the video from an unbiased point of view it wasn't that close. They had more than enough time to speed out of the way and get from under the falling semi. If they had turned that corner seven seconds later that would have been a totally different story. That's not to say I wouldn't be shitting my pants if it had happened to me. I'll post the video when I can. I only saw it a few days ago. But it's crazy/awesome. Right now it's on one of those small camcorder tapes.

 

Some of you fellow military guys probably have stories far more dramatic, but this is mine.

It was early spring in Bagram, Afghanistan. The snow had started to melt in the mountains surrounding the base, so we knew an attack was coming soon. One night I was in MWR (Morale Welfare Recreation) hooch talking to my girlfriend on the phone. A bunch of guys were playing poker, some were watching a movie, others were randomly bullshitting. We heard a loud noise that sounded like somebody slammed a door really hard. Everybody kind of looked at each other for a second, then went back to whatever they were doing. About ten seconds later...

FEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWBAM!!!

Girlfriend: What the fuck was that?
TwoTooFar: Thaaaat was time for me to go.

Everybody sprinted to the bunkers. I got a bit of a glimpse of who everyone really was at that moment. Some people were excited. Some were freaking out. I remember being pretty quiet at that moment. The overwhelming thought I remember was not knowing if somebody just got killed.

My commanding officer happened to be in my bunker, so I heard all the reports coming in. Evidently a rocket landed inside our compound, but had not detonated (first sound we heard). EOD came, dug out the shell, and we were allowed to go back to our normal business. I was walking back to the MWR hooch when I noticed a hole by the entrance of the hooch right next to the MWR center. That was where the undetonated rocket landed, and that was about 10-15 feet from a wall I was sitting on the other side of on the phone.

To be clear, that particular attack consisted of three 107mm rockets. One (undetonated) landed in our compound, the one explosion hit a motor transport compound right next to ours, and another landed far on the other side of base.

 

Unlike some of the posts here, my own stupidity is all that can be blamed for my near death experience.

I was drunk at a bar and wanted to go visit my girlfriend. She lived about 30 minute walk from where i was and i figured that the walk and fresh air could sober me up a little bit. There is this one point where i am about 100m from her front door but obscured by the train line and have to walk about 1 km to the overpass and then back down the adjacent street to actually get there.

This will not do.

I climbed over the fence and began to steady myself down the grass embankment. This was going fine until i slipped and toppled down the 15 or so metres to the bottom. I got up, dusted myself off and checked the damage. I was bleeding from a cut on my arm and i rolled my ankle a bit but all in all i was fine. I got up and started making my way across the tracks.

Still to this day i don't understand how i didn't hear it coming or even see the lights, i was just too focused on my ankle, but i got to about the third train line and this almighty wail coming from the train siren snapped me back to reality. Without even looking i just instinctively launched myself off the track into the rock pits between lines. My shoe got caught on the track and came clean off (luckily) and was crushed by the train.

I waited for it to pass to try and got my shoe back even though it was practically in pieces and arrived at the girlfriends place bleeding with one shoe and grass stains all over my clothes.

No sex for this mess.

 

Been there brother, been there. Back when I was 17, working in a little Chinese place in my hometown, I encountered something quite similar.

On Sundays my boss would spend the morning and most of the afternoon with his family out at the cottage, and leave me and another guy in the kitchen doing prep work and cleaning. We didn't open up for business until he got back so the placed was closed up and we did whatever we had to do until he got back.

Well, we pulled out the line stove and gave the area behind it a good scrubbing. Took 20 minutes to move the fucking thing because it hadn't been moved in years and it was a stubborn bitch every inch of the way. We cleaned behind it, moved it back, and thought nothing of it.

You see, behind the wall on the line was a short hallway with a staircase to the upper floor, and under the first five steps before a landing was an empty space that was directly behind the stove we'd moved, and all the gas lines that went with it. We were later told by the fire department that we'd cracked one of the gas lines while moving the stove, and that the area under the stairs had filled with gas before a pilot light caught it. I guess the old gas lines were real shoddy there because the ones I've worked with in the last couple years are built really tough. These ones, however, apparently cracked pretty easily.

So, we finish moving the stove back and thus finish our cleaning for the day. We have another hour before the boss gets back so we hit the dining room to grab a couple of drinks and take a breather before hitting prep. As we exit the kitchen we're followed by a fucking fireball! My co-worker acted quick, grabbing me and throwing me to the ground under a nearby table, and as soon as we got our sense back we high-tailed it out of there and sprinted across the street to call the fire dept.

We call them up, tell them there's been an explosion at the restaurant and we're told to stay put and someone will swing by and get us. Alright, good. Can't call the boss because the number is written down in the restaurant, but he'll be back pretty soon. I can hear the radio in the building we're in, a little clothing store, and a few minutes pass before I hear the following on the radio:

"This just in: There has been an explosion in the -restaurant name- on Main St. Details aren't known..."

Well, I guess the boss was listening, because 15 minutes later (it's a 30 minute drive to his cottage) he comes ripping into the parking lot behind the restaurant in his truck going 100kph, where myself and my co-worker are waiting with the fire crew while they figure shit out. He rally-crossed it into the parking lot, in full view of several cops, slammed on the brakes, jumped out and started throttling me, "What the fuck did you do to my fucking business you fuck!"

I'm babbling, trying to explain what happened when a cop comes by and pulls the boss aside, calming him down and explaining the situation.

Aftermath: Renovations, forced by the city because a lot of his equipment wasn't up to code, and because of serious damage to the staircase (cracked and broken in many places), his stove (FUBAR'd), his plate shelf (obliterated), and various other things. In the long run, it did him a lot of good because he went all out during the down time and the resulting improvements made a lot of shit run much smoother. That being said, he still holds a grudge to this day about what happened.