What is the most adventurous thing you have ever done?

[Steelplate]

yep; i know that feeling. i have fronted a rock band for fifteen years, and just did my first solo acoustic show this past winter. had to have a couple drinks to pull it off.

as for adventurous, mine would probably be something onstage, also. a couple of them :

learned to blow fire for a show. then the venue decided at the last minute we couldn't do it.

once we were playing this sports bar for a crowd that just wanted to eat buffalo wings and didn't give much of a **** about us. i ran out into the crowd, grabbed someone's bottle of ketchup, sprayed it all over myself, and ran around the bar screaming and rolling on the floor in mock agony. they actually liked that one.

I've done a couple solo acoustic shows....but I feel more comfortable with my buddy picking out leads and playing counterpoint chords while I'm pounding out the main rhythm and singing.

It makes for a much fuller, richer sound and I can concentrate better on lyrics and my singing. Although, there are times when he'll experiment on the leads and do something really cool....and it throws me off.

It's OK in practice, because I can just stop and say. "What did you do there? That was awesome!" But at a gig...you can't. So we just run through the chord progression one more time before I start singing again. Doesn't happen too often, but after playing together for 12 years, we both recognize it when it happens and are adept at covering it up.

 

[Helix]

I've done a couple solo acoustic shows....but I feel more comfortable with my buddy picking out leads and playing counterpoint chords while I'm pounding out the main rhythm and singing.

It makes for a much fuller, richer sound and I can concentrate better on lyrics and my singing. Although, there are times when he'll experiment on the leads and do something really cool....and it throws me off.

It's OK in practice, because I can just stop and say. "What did you do there? That was awesome!" But at a gig...you can't. So we just run through the chord progression one more time before I start singing again. Doesn't happen too often, but after playing together for 12 years, we both recognize it when it happens and are adept at covering it up.

in my current band, i leave guitar to the pros. i do the acoustic cover gigs because i always promised myself i'd buckle down and learn the guitar well enough to accompany myself. plus it gives me a chance to do some really B side covers that you normally can't pull off at a bar as a band. it's nice to love every song you're playing.

 

[Woodman909]

Skydive

 

[Steelplate]

in my current band, i leave guitar to the pros. i do the acoustic cover gigs because i always promised myself i'd buckle down and learn the guitar well enough to accompany myself. plus it gives me a chance to do some really B side covers that you normally can't pull off at a bar as a band. it's nice to love every song you're playing.

That's why we do what we do....we aren't looking to get rich or even work more than 2-3 times/month...we have families and jobs.

There are a couple of places we play that want to hear more popular songs...so we sprinkle some in(as little as we can get away with and still keep getting invited back). Typical stuff....like Brown Eyed Girl, Wonderful Tonight, Peaceful Easy Feeling, etc....

There are three songs that we play which are more Rock & Roll oriented that we do always play....The Weight, Copperhead Road, and Atlantic City. I play mandolin on the last two. The version of Atlantic City we play, we stole from The Band...off of the Jericho album.....if we're playing fast and need some time to eat up before a break, we do a speeded up version of knocking on heaven's door that my buddy just kills with solos.


EDIT: sorry to go off topic...

 

[Helix]

That's why we do what we do....we aren't looking to get rich or even work more than 2-3 times/month...we have families and jobs.

There are a couple of places we play that want to hear more popular songs...so we sprinkle some in(as little as we can get away with and still keep getting invited back). Typical stuff....like Brown Eyed Girl, Wonderful Tonight, Peaceful Easy Feeling, etc....

There are three songs that we play which are more Rock & Roll oriented that we do always play....The Weight, Copperhead Road, and Atlantic City. I play mandolin on the last two. The version of Atlantic City we play, we stole from The Band...off of the Jericho album.....if we're playing fast and need some time to eat up before a break, we do a speeded up version of knocking on heaven's door that my buddy just kills with solos.


EDIT: sorry to go off topic...

sounds like i would definitely dig you guys.

ok, i'll stop derailing the thread now, lol.

 

[opendebate]

I would be sitting here an hour and nobody would really care so I think not. I have one eye and am missing part of a foot from my Nam "adventure" but I don't think that's what you're looking for. My entire life seems like one adventure after another but if you insist on one story here it is. I was 18 and there was a hurricane developing in the Pacific off Mexico so me and some buds decided to go to Baja to a place called 49K that was known to hold up in really big surf. We got there and the waves were huge and breaking nicely so we started paddling out and paddling and paddling. The swells must of been getting there the same time as us and the farther we paddled out the bigger the waves got and the farther out they broke. Finally there was a huge swell that looked like a mountain coming and we paddled for all we were worth but it soon became obvious this thing was going to break before we got over it. It sounded like thunder as the lip crashed into the blue water about a hundred feet in front of us so we hyperventilated a few breaths and dove for the bottom. Round and round I went like I was in a washing machine and it went on and on and on until I was sure I was going to drown. Finally I popped up and so did my two buds though we were widely scattered in foam we couldn't see over but we could shout and take a head count. It took us over an hour to get into shore as we got beat up by wave after wave as the sea tried to suck us out into oblivian. When we finally made it we found our boards had been crashing into the rocks over and over and were completely destroyed. We got in our VW van and went home tails between legs. THE END

Boys. May you guys are lucky you make it past adolescence. But it was exciting/terrifying though.

 

[dnsmith]

Boys. May you guys are lucky you make it past adolescence. But it was exciting/terrifying though.

I think some of us made it out of adolescence by pure accident. I went through Viet Nam with a few bruises and cuts (not combat related) but no major issues. My most "adventurous" (childish and quite stupid) time was as a 17 year old in India. My father was a US Aid Agriculturist the US sent to India to help feed the refugees after the Partition. I spent the better part of the spring after graduating high school in one of the Colonization Projects designed to resettle some of the millions of those refugees. Mostly I spent time meat hunting in my spare time.

On one occasion I sat in a char poi (rope frame cot) with a buffalo calf staked out to lure a tiger which had been eating the villagers live stock. About 1AM the tiger appeared and whacked the calf with his paw breaking its neck and killing it. Of course I was excited, so much so I sighted down the double barrel loaded with slugs and took aim without squeezing the banana switch which would have provided enough light to aim properly, and fired. The tiger almost did a back flip and I was sure, so very very sure, I have seriously wounded it. The next morning, much against the wishes of my shikar (baby sitter in my mind) I tracked the tiger down the dry river bed to where it had turned into a dry slough. I started to follow it in the slough and realized finally that this was not a good idea.

As it turned out, when the Resettlement Chief came to pick my shikar and I up, he insisted on digging up about a 10' x 10' square until we found the slug, deformed but with no sign of blood. I had obviously missed completely.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Acid

Hang gliding

Going down Georgia 400 at 120 mph

Riding around at one point with 45k of cash on me

Getting stoned and laid in Cancun.



I am sure there are other memories if I think hard enough

 

[tech30528]

Hmmmm. Well, I used to have a bicycle team, I was a time trialer. We used to do RAGBRAI, a 500 mile week long tour across Iowa the last full week in July. My top flat groung speed was 53.5 mph. My top downhill speed was here in Georgia, 62 mph. That is seriously fast on twisty mountain roads on 17mm wide tires!

I used to solo winter camp in central Wisconsin at Devils lake and free climb the granite bluffs in the snow.

I once sawed off two of my fingers (18 years old) and refused to move back in to my parents' home, instead got a job as a house painter with pins in my fingers and a cast on my left arm. Try that with extension ladders and paint buckets.

I've done several solo hikes on the Appalachian Trail in wild boar country.

I once bought a truck (still have it), pulled the head off of it and did a half assed rebuild (didn't have the money to do it right) and drove 1700 miles round trip from Chicago to Alabama to see my now wife for her birthday with no tools or cell phone.

I risked everything I had and started a business while my wife was not working (in school) with a 5 year old at home.

I sold a house in Illinois and moved my family to Georgia while my son was less than a month old... with no job lined up.

I got married and had a kid.

 

[tech30528]

I gave up a lucrative but unsatisfying job in public finance in an attempt to write novels for a living. Fifteen years and 35 published novels later, my great adventure ended when I was physically unable to stand the grueling pace of travel, speaking engagements, and everything else it takes to maintain a career as a novelist.

I thought about writing about our gold prospecting adventures, and the time a wildfire almost enveloped our RV as we dodged burning branches on a dirt road out of the forest... but I wasn't nearly as scared or excited then as I was when I sent off my first manuscript, so...

Good for you! I've tried to do it before, in fact I have a couple of really interesting stories, but have never been able to write in enough detail to make one novel length.

 

[Black Dog]

Jumped out of a plane.

Now that beats the hell out of walking miles with a heavy load! I did plenty of that in the Army and it was no adventure.

 

[Bodi]

Great age for your kids, enjoy them and New Zealand is in the top three on my list of places to visit (I'm a little jealous)

I am in the same boat at you physically so I have scaled way back. My daughter left for college and my son moved out with friends so I packed up and moved to a new state to reunite with the man I dated when I was 17. We dated long distance for a couple of years and when my kids moved out we went for it. Different adventure I guess. So far so good.

Also, the time at the school sounds really interesting. Are you still teaching? Had you come from a background that made the conditions at this school easy for you to manage or was that a challenging transition?

Good to hear you are on a great adventure. They come in all shapes and sizes...

I assume you mean that gang infested inner city school? I came from upper middle class Orange County where everybody was white. Schools were great. Etc. That job was my first teaching one and I was one of only two white people on the staff and there were no white students. 95% black with the rest Hispanic. It was an expulsion school to boot meaning they were all the "bad" kids and was in what was the murder capitol of America for part of the 90's... Nothing in my background prepared me for anything remotely like it other than "Stand and Deliver". :lol:

There are a ton of stories about violence there. Attacks on teachers. Destruction of teachers cars. All teachers had their cars messed with but me. I asked the kids a couple of times and they said it was because I was cool and related to them. My personality is one that can relate to pretty much anybody and humor transcends cultures...

I am still teaching. Yes. My first 6 years were in Northern California at that school, an elite private school and regular public school. Since then I have been at the local high school and I coach the girls varsity soccer team. We are 9-1 so far this year, btw.

 

[opendebate]

Good to hear you are on a great adventure. They come in all shapes and sizes...

I assume you mean that gang infested inner city school? I came from upper middle class Orange County where everybody was white. Schools were great. Etc. That job was my first teaching one and I was one of only two white people on the staff and there were no white students. 95% black with the rest Hispanic. It was an expulsion school to boot meaning they were all the "bad" kids and was in what was the murder capitol of America for part of the 90's... Nothing in my background prepared me for anything remotely like it other than "Stand and Deliver". :lol:

There are a ton of stories about violence there. Attacks on teachers. Destruction of teachers cars. All teachers had their cars messed with but me. I asked the kids a couple of times and they said it was because I was cool and related to them. My personality is one that can relate to pretty much anybody and humor transcends cultures...

I am still teaching. Yes. My first 6 years were in Northern California at that school, an elite private school and regular public school. Since then I have been at the local high school and I coach the girls varsity soccer team. We are 9-1 so far this year, btw.

Awesome, congrats on the season.

So it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on violence in those communities. (Total derail I know.) There has been so much conversation here about how to address the violence among young black males. I tend to believe that everyone is unique but that they are a very influenced by our environment. Not to say they are not responsible for how they behave but you can not ignore what a person has been exposed to all their lives. I get alot of push back for holding that view. Since you lived there and worked with these kids I would love to hear your thoughts. If you are comfortable of course.

 

[opendebate]

Acid

Hang gliding

Going down Georgia 400 at 120 mph

Riding around at one point with 45k of cash on me

Getting stoned and laid in Cancun.

I am sure there are other memories if I think hard enough

Maybe it's the Acid.

 

[Bodi]

Awesome, congrats on the season.

So it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on violence in those communities. (Total derail I know.) There has been so much conversation here about how to address the violence among young black males. I tend to believe that everyone is unique but that they are a very influenced by our environment. Not to say they are not responsible for how they behave but you can not ignore what a person has been exposed to all their lives. I get alot of push back for holding that view. Since you lived there and worked with these kids I would love to hear your thoughts. If you are comfortable of course.

My experience with that is only in school. I lived over 60 miles away in the remote mountains in the Napa Valley wine country and drove in to the East Bay (Oakland area).

There are obviously really smart poor people out there. That was evident with the kids. Some really smart gang kids were there, but they were a product of their enviroment, as you say. When you met the parents (if ever) you would see why the kid is that way, generally. Solutions? I don't have any other than to stop wearing hoodies and make better decisions but a lot of that doesn't happen since they don't understand the value or what an education can offer them. They see violence, live in it, etc. and since nobody around them that they trust is educated they don't see the benefits. The opposite is true for familes like mine. We never thought of not going to university just like these kids never think about going. My grandparent were business owners, my dad a Ph.D., my mom a Masters, my brother a CPA and I have a Masters degree. Trying to explain opporunities and choice to those kids was pointless... not because they aren't smart but because it is a completely foreign world and concept.

 

[opendebate]

My experience with that is only in school. I lived over 60 miles away in the remote mountains in the Napa Valley wine country and drove in to the East Bay (Oakland area).

There are obviously really smart poor people out there. That was evident with the kids. Some really smart gang kids were there, but they were a product of their enviroment, as you say. When you met the parents (if ever) you would see why the kid is that way, generally. Solutions? I don't have any other than to stop wearing hoodies and make better decisions but a lot of that doesn't happen since they don't understand the value or what an education can offer them. They see violence, live in it, etc. and since nobody around them that they trust is educated they don't see the benefits. The opposite is true for familes like mine. We never thought of not going to university just like these kids never think about going. My grandparent were business owners, my dad a Ph.D., my mom a Masters, my brother a CPA and I have a Masters degree. Trying to explain opporunities and choice to those kids was pointless... not because they aren't smart but because it is a completely foreign world and concept.

Yes, I get that. I completely agree that an understanding of the benefits of education is missing and why would anyone pursue something that they don't think will benefit their life. It's just such a waste of humanity. Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Maybe it's the Acid.

maybe, all that happened when I was a teenager, and I dropped acid when hexen came out (a doom clone) and it was an interesting experience.

 

[opendebate]

maybe, all that happened when I was a teenager, and I dropped acid when hexen came out (a doom clone) and it was an interesting experience.

Great Avatar BTW

 

[MMC]

I joined the Army and then I became a Ranger. Jumped out of planes. Rapelled out of Helicopters. Went to NAM. Climbed hills in the rain and mud, trekked thru the Jungle. Played War for Uncle Sam. Also prior to went to Panama, learned some scuba and snorkeling across a river. A few other things about being out in the jungle.

When I came home a buddy of mine had a Pilots License. So he took us over Chicago and we were smoking some sensi bud. Flying across the lakefront and then Back over Meigs Field. Then we followed Lake Shore Drive and then Columbus ave. Flying Directly over the Road. Like we were a car. Always thought we were going to get busted for flying that low back then. But nothing ever came from it other than a Night out on the town. The City looked so awesome lit up at night. It was great. Just a Little Cessna Plane.

Also when I came back home overseas.....I was tricked into going to a Nude beach out West Coast. Talk about an adventure. Well see it started out innocently like. With we were going to the beach. I was from Chicago and it was my first time out West Coast. So they use to trip off the way I was, talked and acted. Anyhow they took me out to Blacks Beach, at first I was all for it when we got there.


I was thinking of all the women and that they would be Naked. Mostly California women. Blonds mmmmm. Well Everything started out all okay. These guys found us a spot and then decided they were going to have some fun with me. Now mind you these guys are use to this ****. So they just plop down sitting there legs all stretched out. Not a care in the World. Start Bsing and then.....the women started coming round and walking by. So I am sitting there looking at whatever chick they are pointing out to me.


Yeah.....oh yeah. Women coming out of the Water stark naked, water dripping down the front of them. Sun glistening off their tanned skin. I am thinking damn now this is paradise.

Then all of a Sudden....Lil MMC started to wake up. So one of the bruthas. starts laughing.....and now starts calling chicks over to come and meet the guy from Chicago. :shock: I am like freaking as now This chick walks up and she is absolute gorgeous. Water is glistening off her body and and YEAH. So he starts to intro her to me.....and as soon as she shook my hand. Lil MMC decided that he was going to stand at attention. Well.....I rolled over onto my stomach. These guys are laughing their asses off. Just sitting there like she was nothing. So they played on it calling girls over and the whole time I had to lay there and talk to them while laying on my stomach.

Finally after Lil MMC went back to sleep. I broke for the water. Got out waste deep and was like yeah. Now mess with me. Then I remembered where I was Out in California and thought.....Sharks. Great Whites. Well.....needless to say.....I did my little part on warming the sea. Then promptly headed out. Grabbed upped my stuff and left and waited outside until those guys showed up. I couldn't believe what had just happened there. Still couldn't believe those guys couldn't be affected by all those different women. Never again.....for me with a Nude beach eva!!!!!

Definitely was an adventure.

 

[SayMyName]

Adventurous thing. Goodness. Some I can not reveal because I am not sure about the laws of...you know...when things expire. Whatever.

Streaking across the football field at a Marshall University game some 35 years ago? My first parachute jump in the army? My first time in combat and saw that I was the only one fighting besides my platoon seargeant and squad leader and everyone else was hiding in their hole? The prettiest girl I ever saw, only to find out that going up to her Paris apartment she was not all the woman I thought her to be? Hiking across Israel and the West Bank? What about my latest gig, walking the pilgrimage of the 800 kilometer Camino de Santiago across the north of Spain that I just finished a month ago. Hmmm, this is a hard one. Then there was that time in Mogadishu...*winks*

 

[Mr.Nick]

Sometimes I go out on my own "survivor man" style and live off the land for weeks at a time.

That's an adventure - it's also a skill everyone should know...

Some people think I'm an idiot for doing it but I like it so who cares??

 

[Neomalthusian]

10 days in Denali National Park
350 miles (30 days) of the Appalachian Trail
20 mile kayak (1 day) to bear observatory
Thanksgiving in a remote Alaska forest service cabin each of the last 4 years
Week of fishing out of a tiny outboard skiff near Cordova, AK
Carried Sauron's ring across Middle Earth and cast it into the fiery chasm of Mt. Doom from whence it came

Nothing too crazy, but for some people maybe...

 

[dnsmith]

I have done the "survivalist" thing too, by need, while in Vietnam. Our UH-1 set down in an LZ near a Montanyard Special Forces camp. We shut down and tied the rotor as per normal and as soon as we did, we were caught in small arms fire. As it approached dark we opened the fuel drain valve and lit the fuel on fire. The resultant flash blinded those who had not shielded their eyes, and we headed out into the jungle away from the fire. Fortunately we had retrieved our weapons so we were not defenseless. We had to traverse several miles of jungle before running into a small village in which we found someone who could direct us safely to the original camp. The most difficult issue was sterilizing water as we didn't want smoke to give away our location. Food was not too difficult as the jungle was teeming with wildlife easy to bag, though I really didn't like eating raw meat.

 

[Gipper]

Went balls-deep on a chick when the Ferris Wheel was stuck.

 

[TheGirlNextDoor]

Went balls-deep on a chick when the Ferris Wheel was stuck.

Thanks for that image.