Cringeworthy!! Surprised you didn’t pass out. That was worse than my youthful bicycle ‘crossbow’ catapult caper…
Riding around the neighborhood at Night … we cruised to our local elementary school … to race each other around the building which had large parking lots on two sides and a nice wide, connected sidewalk on the other sides.
I was up off the seat, pumping the pedals like a maniac … way out in front of my buddies … then it happened: I didn’t see the chain stretched across the parking lot between two concrete-filled steel posts (it was NOT there during the day!).
I plowed into the chain and it only moved a few feet >>> then up and over the handlebars I flew, while my bike shot backward like an arrow and skidded across the pavement.
I hit HARD onto my left shoulder… KABAAMMM! … Didn’t break anything, but my shoulder was a mess for some years after that: if I totally relaxed the deltoid muscle my Humerous bone would drop out of my shoulder socket. I figured that wasn’t a good thing to keep doing and with strengthening exercises normalcy returned. Thank God for that and for all other times Angels saved me from youthful derring-do stunts that could’ve maimed me.
I used to have to ride my horse ten miles to get to my girlfriend’s property and meet up with her at the swimming hole. My Pa told me that a girl will treat you like she treats her horse, and I found that to be true. He also said that she will keep her house like she keeps her own bedroom. The only problem I had seen with that is she has six sisters she shared the room with. I do have to say she did keep the stables clean!
Yeah, hitchhiked a lot from age 15-18. Highlight rides were somewhere around DC to Homestead FL to NJ with a trucker named Pat. Great guy, hoping I meet him again in the next life to properly thank him. Other rides were a few hundred mile before that one in Frank Zappa’s tour bus. Frank was taking a break ‘77-’78 time frame,and loaned his bus to his brother and friends to go to Mardi Gras. That whole trip was CT to Homestead and back, though my plan was to do the spring break college thing. The last ride of that trip was from the George Washington bridge all the way to the town next to mine by a guy in a panel truck who collected used cooking grease from restaurants and sold it to Palmolive. Hitchhiked up to Cape Cod during a 4 day break one time. Girlfriend dropped me off on the highway, I made it about 10 miles before running into some youths partying up the embankment. They saw me,called me over, I wasn’t sure if I was getting mugged or what, ended up getting blasted with them for 5 hours, got back down to the highway and got immediately picked up by the head of the Red Cross Northeast chapter. I was a red cross certified water safety instructor/ lifeguard so this was rather ironic. Got dropped off in Boston, got a ride to my buddies sister’s (and friends ) place, and caught a ride back to CT with some nut with a siren in his van which reminds me of that Gumball Rally movie.
Lot of concert related posts in the thread so I’ll chime in. First “real” show, Kansas 1976 I guess, Leftoverture tour. Local amusement park before that, saw Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Rick Derringer, Fabulous Rhinestones, and the world famous Slim Coxx and his Cowboy Caravan lol. Other bands I saw, Ted Nugent 3x, Doobie Brothers, Journey, Blue Oyster Cult club/theater/arena shows, got into the Grateful Dead ‘76-’83. My son ended up in a band and played some festivals before becoming a Marine, so we ended up seeing Primus and Janes Addiction a lot…like 15 times each. We saw Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden around 2012. One of my top 3 was Nine Inch Nails….dang what a show. Cooper/Maiden and Primus 3d the other “3 best “ Most memorable show, Ramones at the Shaboo Inn, 1978. Had my feet on DeeDees monitors, guy standing next to me passed out with his head in the freaking Marshall cabinet. Son suicided, I got old and not into crowds ( or people in general)anymore, so it’s headphones and YouTube these days. Good memories though.
One Primus Frizzle Fry shirt and it’s pretty beat. I wasn’t ever really into the merchandise and seem to beat the crap out of t-shirts,but did find a grateful dead pin when we moved, probably 45 years after getting it. The matching shirt got ripped when a guy grabbed me in a fight ( he insulted my buddies wife) and I pushed him over the hood of his ‘78 Firebird. Ah, the good old days.
Ahhhh the things I’ve done, the Concerts I attended, the gunfights I survived, the Women—oh, the Women Glorious Life. It wasn’t all sh!ts n grins, hard times too, Nasty events , but the good out weighed the awful…
‘How to tell yer old’…. you reminisce more from yer Easy chair while shaking yer head @ the Yoots antics today. A time honored Tradition passed down generation to generation. Just DON’T JUDGE (If they make it they will be doing the same thing)
Yep, sometime in the not too distant past, I realized I missed most of what passed for modern culture of the last 20 years or so. Trends have come and gone and I didn’t even notice. Now days my head is filled with more memories than plans for the future.
How can anyone plan for the future when everything is in ‘Flux’? (nice way of putting it) Day by day the folk’s seem to get a little bit crazier, the DEMONcrats a little bit more UNHINGED. Justifying STEALING, Defund the Police? No more ‘Jail/Court system’…WHAT?
I hit my 60’s and something said ‘PULL BACK’ The Pudding years? Something said ‘Pull Back!’. I’m the guy that now stay’s close to home tending to his house and grounds (Puttering), More time in my Backyard than the front yard. I’m not anti-social yet but I’ve chosen the Path of least resistance.
Keep at it , man; you’ll get there! It’s like anything else–focus on your goal, train like you mean it, and soon it becomes muscle memory. You don’t even have to think about it.
I’m in the forest a lot these days. We moved basically around the corner from the NE corner of the monongahela, so in 15 minutes I can be heading up a mountain. I’ve been doing 1-2 steep hikes a week, 1300-2000’ of vertical, then I go down the lake and do around 4 miles moderate hills once or twice as well. Occasionally take the motorhome out and set up a base for a couple day hikes and solitude, with a hot shower and comfortable bunk afterwwards. Thought my hip was getting real bad, but the wife diagnosed it as carrying iwb hitting my sciatic, so went to owb and good for another 20 years lol. My motto these days is “more cattle than deer, more deer than people” and I’m good with that. 66 now, wife asked me to outlive her when my son died which is bucking the odds, but I’m doing my best. At 21, the mil doc told me to “go home, make peace with your family” as hypertension was going to kill me. 23, couldn’t feel my legs for a year, told I’d be para, possibly quadriplegic by 35….66, no longer go to the doctors lol. My neighbors live in the state of West Virginia. I live in the state of denial!
I’m the same way Brother, I look @ the Sandia Mountain (Elevation 10,678) and I say to myself daily ‘Man that’s pretty!’ and then go inside and have another Coffee!…..
On the one hand, today’s medical industry has boiled down to “which drug do we throw at it this time?”. On the other hand, if I KNEW everything wrong with me I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning!
Sure, ignorance has its side effects, but what doesn’t?
It chaffed @ me to have to go to the ER twice recently (Groin injury/UTI) but suffering is not good for the Soul. Fortunately I came in contact with two Doctors that weren’t Pill pushers and just got the job done, righted my ship and off I went. They weren’t even concerned when looking at my ‘chart’ and it said Medications: NONE, Primary Doctor(s) : NONE. Didn’t push ‘More Medical’ on me which was a relief.
‘That’s good’ —- Almost like ‘Do stupid folk’s KNOW they’re stupid’…..
) place, and caught a ride back to CT with some nut with a siren in his van which reminds me of that Gumball Rally movie.
OOPS! Was that out loud?
—- Almost like ‘Do stupid folk’s KNOW they’re stupid’…..