|
|
Post by Sollo on Aug 16, 2006 12:08:39 GMT -5
Things seem a little slow these days. We need something to help kick off conversation. I would like to hear about any of your accomplishments or exceptionally fun activities you've experienced that you will never forget.
I'll kick off with something from my youth.
When I was in my middle Teens (about 25 years ago) I got a crazy idea to see how high I could fly a kite. I purchased a kite at the store along with 2,000 feet of kite string. I launched it in my driveway and carefully started spooling out the line. I think I had four 500 foot spools and I had to tie the end of each to the beginning of the next until I finally got all 2000 feet spooled out. I had actually drawn a small crowd because everyone could clearly see that I was flying a kite but could not actually see any kite! It was so far up that it was lost from view.
Just as I was considering the monumental task of reeling it all back in, my dad came home. His car antenna caught on the line and snapped it. I never saw that kite again even though I spent the rest of the day on my bike searching for it.
|
|
|
|
Post by Indagatrix on Aug 16, 2006 15:55:29 GMT -5
I pulled the chair out from under my 3rd grade teacher.  |
|
|
|
Post by ronin on Aug 16, 2006 16:35:54 GMT -5
Wow Inda, I did something similar in the ninth grade... Actually I threw a chair out the window from the third floor in my school.
But a more pleasant accomplishment actually was when I was down at the gym a few years ago and outlifted some steroid bodybuilding freaks. They were all huffing and puffing and pressing about 300 lbs in "standing calves press" (How can I explain it). After they were finished I was doing the same thing. They started taking off weights and I told them to stop. Then I did my usual sets were I finish off by pressing a little over a 1000 lbs 10 times. By that time these big hulks looked like they wanted to kill me. Another victory for the drug free lifters!
|
|
|
|
Post by Sollo on Aug 17, 2006 7:12:14 GMT -5
I pulled the chair out from under my 3rd grade teacher. It sounds like there is an interesting story there. A young child pulls a mean practical joke on a faculty member and then grows up to be a faculty member herself. One wonders if any cruel pranks have been pulled on her to even the score.  I finish off by pressing a little over a 1000 lbs 10 times. Holy cow! You must be built like Arnold! I didn't even think it was possible for the human body to support that much weight. You should post a picture of those pipes! |
|
|
|
Post by Indagatrix on Aug 17, 2006 7:25:25 GMT -5
I pulled the chair out from under my 3rd grade teacher. It sounds like there is an interesting story there. A young child pulls a mean practical joke on a faculty member and then grows up to be a faculty member herself. One wonders if any cruel pranks have been pulled on her to even the score. Naw the cruel joke was played by him -- as a punishment for pulling the chair out from under him he sent me to the library. Little did I know he was laying the foundation for a curse that wouldn't reveal itself until much much later. (I actually really really liked this teacher he was one of my all time favorite teachers. I had just pulled the chair out for him to sit in it...but something told my little 3rd grader brain "PULL THE CHAIR" and I thought "Really? Well that does sound like fun" and WHOOPS! he fell on the floor. He never held the incident against me...a very kind man and good teacher.) |
|
|
|
Post by RedArrow on Aug 17, 2006 9:35:31 GMT -5
My accomplishment was to "live" through my adolecent years after all the dumb "fun" things I did as kid growing up in San Diego.
The most unforgetable,(thought it would be fun) thing I ever did was try to ignite an old military mortar shell (bout the size of a granade) that I had swiped from a farmers shed in the area where I lived.
Seems his farm land had been a military practice range back in the early 40's and he would occasianaly turn these up.
I later figured out the mortar shell had been fired but didn't detonate on impact but at the time I thought the now exposed primer was a propelant as opposed to an explosive and thought I could put the projectile in the crotch of a tree branch in our front yard and send it skyward.
I put a match to it.... no go, I scraped some of the exposed hard packed gray primer powder from the rear end of the shell on the sidewalk put a match to it and woosh it lit...I was on track! The powder was still good and the loose stuff would fire up no brob just the compresed stuff just needed a hotter source to set it off. Ligher fluid! No go
I had a brainstorm!...hollow out more of the primer charge then pack the the end with match heads. Did it put it in the branch crotch put match to it, whoosh went the match heads... but no go!
Ok this is no fun anymore guess I'll go skateboarding at the Jr. High School handball courts...
Later that night I went back to contemplating my "rocket" and why it wouldn't fly finally the thought occured, hmmm maybe it's not a rocket???
Oh wow!!!! it's not I thought, Holy bleep!
It is funny in a way...but I still get a chill when I think about that day.
|
|
|
|
Post by Sollo on Aug 17, 2006 10:05:50 GMT -5
I'll bet it was a while before you told your parents about that. Glad that you are still with us though. That could have been a very bad day for you... |
|
|
|
Post by laurelin on Aug 17, 2006 15:50:05 GMT -5
This isn't an accomplishment...nor can it ba called"fun times" (except in retrospect), but it is kinda funny. I grew up in a little place called Acme and when I was very young I thought that it was so neat that all the devices in cartoons were made where I lived. I mean, how cool is that?....Then one day....I realized....none of those things worked.  I wasn't quite as proud of where I lived anymore. |
|
|
|
Post by ronin on Aug 17, 2006 15:54:14 GMT -5
Actually I'm not a very big guy, around 200-210 lbs and 5'10, but I work out for strenght and endurance and not to get big bulky muscles. The calves can lift huge amount of weight when you think about it. Every time you go for a walk they lift your entire bodyweight and you can do that for as long as you like without them getting worn out. Most of the stress from lifting that kind of weight on your shoulders is from the muscle around your waist. I also use belts when I do it for extra support. Also I must add, my calves are exceptionally strong, I haven't seen anyone at my gym press that much regardless of their size and a lot of these guys lift a lot more than me in every other thing.
I've seen people benchpress as much as that (given they are doped up like race horses and use special shirts that act like a rubberband), the current world record in bench stands at 1005 lbs. And just for the record or sick and amazing lifts, I've seen people leg press over 2000 lbs on videos. So the body, chemically enchanced or not, can do much more than people think.
Red, your post also takes me back, but we made gasoline bombs and set fire to some huge tractor tires... I was very naughty as a juvenile.
|
|
|
|
Post by spiritofice on Aug 21, 2006 18:38:45 GMT -5
A couple years ago in school, when the snow had fallen and we were all exited about the sparkly white shiny stuff outside, me and a friend took a blue tray downstairs to gather snow with to throw at people in the classroom. When we got outside we found a huge snowball dumped on top of a bin. It took both of us to lift it it was so big. Needless to say we got the giant snowball and put it on the blue tray, which just about held it even though it was way over the edges.
We ran from outside with a giant snowball, and up two flights of stairs, and were running down a corridor when we spotted a teacher. We placed the snowball on the ground and darted into the nearest classroom. I don't know what was with the teacher that day, but he just walked straight past the giant snowball and didn't give it a second glance. We nipped back out and managed to get it into our classroom. After a few photo shoots we realised that the teacher would turn up soon, and we needed to dispose of it.
WE opened one of the classroom windows and hauled teh snowball over. As we lifted it up to the window we realised there was no way it was going to get through, and in some bizzare moment of madness we both just let go of the snowball, which crashed onto the ground and left a mound of snow on the carpet. In the end the carpet got soaked and dripped through to the classroom below, and we got a weeks worth of lunch time detentions (because the teacher liked us, the other option was suspension).
Even earlier in my school life I had an incident which nearly killed someone and cost me £20 (alot to someone with no income at all). I was messing about in a classroom spinning around on a teachers chair, and as it was a wheely chair I started rolling about. I rolled it out of the classroom and 4 of my darling classmates rushed to the door and blocked me out, just as the teacher whos chair i was due to come back. I used all my rugby player strength to try and open the door, but it was not going to work. On my final big push my elbow slipped and smacked a locker next to me, which toppled sideways and nearly crushed a sixth former coming out of a room. After I apologised alot and picked up the locker I walked back in the classroom, now with an open door. Everyone had slightly stunned expressions ont heir faces and I followed their line of sight to see that there was a window behind where the locker had been...or more accurately there HAD been a window there, the window was now in pieces scattered across the classroom floor. Good times, good times.
|
|
|
|
Post by Quintare on Aug 21, 2006 23:49:20 GMT -5
hmm...
Ascending a crack barehanded in Palm Springs CA. About 35 feet up there is a swell in the shale face to get around so I jammed my toes in deep and grabbed the fat part of the cliff with the flat of my hands. All goes well for a foot or two as I inch my way up, then the shale flakes off and I'm twisting, falling, skating down the cliff on it... till I'm nearly upside down, hanging from my toe which is still jammed deep in that crack.
My toe was pulverized, and now has a 90 degree bend in the tip of it, but better than pulverized skull ^^
|
|
|
|
Post by Sollo on Aug 22, 2006 7:53:16 GMT -5
When I was about 14 and my sister was 12... I was walking through the house minding my own business when my sister came up to me and kicked me in the nuts! Naturally I went down like a sack of potato's. For those that haven't experienced it, the pain is indescribable, and therefor I won't describe it. I lay there in pain for prolly 5 minutes while my sister stood there and laughed the whole time. I actually was recovering after 3-4 minutes but I continued the act so that I could jump up and catch her off guard. And it worked too! So I was proceeding to murder her. Seriously! I was only 14 so I had no idea how to kill someone but I was running ideas through my head as I was beating her. Well, I think she figured out that her life was in danger because her screaming had a more urgent quality to it than normal and it made my dad curious.
My dad showed up on the scene and broke it up, demanding to know what got into me. After I explained, he said, "OK son, let me handle this." Then he laid into her verbally and physically.
The first part of the experience wasn't much fun but I Really enjoyed watching my dad smack her around. I suspect that was the last time she tried that little stunt with anyone...
Now that we are all grown up and a quarter of a century has passed, we get along very well but as kinds we faught all the time...
|
|
I wasn't quite as proud of where I lived anymore.
